


will lose my desire for you (never my love)

by ken_ichijouji (dommific)



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alchemy, Alternate Universe - Fullmetal Alchemist 2003/Brotherhood Fusion, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Domesticity, Eventual Happy Ending, Eye Trauma, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Melancholy, Mentions of Cancer, Military, Non-Linear Narrative, Resurrection, Romance, Themes of Grief and Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-01
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2018-10-26 03:46:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 31,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10778907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dommific/pseuds/ken_ichijouji
Summary: Victor is ten when he leaves home to fine tune his alchemy, nineteen when he meets Katsuki Yuuri, twenty when he becomes a State Alchemist and a husband, and twenty-two when a teen named Yuri Plisetsky begins to report to him.His world changes drastically a few years later, and when Victor makes a decision that cannot be undone, he unlocks a mystery and crosses paths with a man only known as Lust.





	1. Victor

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seventhstar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhstar/gifts).



> Hokay so first, [the art that inspired even an idea of this at all by mikkapi](https://mikkapi.tumblr.com/post/157974215169/i-miss-you-guys-and-i-miss-drawing-fanart-%E0%B2%A5%E0%B2%A5). I am...not following the idea presented PER SE or to the letter, but the spirit etc etc etc. (The art is rad, thank you!)
> 
> The title is from "Never My Love" by the Association because sometimes I like piling on the angst. Also my friend feelslikefire said it was "rude af so you gotta."
> 
> The violence is obvs canon-typical for FMA since you know I don't think anyone even throws a punch in YOI? I mean Yurio probs tries to kick people with his knife shoes a lot but that's something that they're all used to and ignore by now, I'd bet.
> 
> This is PRIMARILY based off Fullmetal Alchemist 03, but I took an artistic liberty to combine the Homunculi's weaknesses from both the manga and that show. How they're created is all FMA 03 though *whistle*
> 
> You may feel like I put people in exact roles as the FMA cast, but sort of only in terms of like their literal occupation. I hope I didn't make it uninteresting.
> 
> Also no Shou Tucker-type character because as mean as people think I am for this fic, I'm not actually Satan. I might be like...a minor demon...but I'm definitely not Satan. For spoilers on the Homunculi and who they are in YOI, scroll to the end notes.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who encouraged this since I couldn't stop until I got it all written out. I promise we'll be back with Taker updates and happier things pronto.
> 
> Tell my mother I loved her and I'm sorry.

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/domminess/37199390616/in/dateposted-public/)

Victor is ten when he leaves home.

He accepts a study program with Yakov Feltsman, as his parents are not _gifted_ like him but hard working, loving, understanding, and supportive. They let him go with hugs and instructions to write, his mother makes sure he has warm clothes, and off on a train he travels by himself. 

Yakov is stern. Yakov is dedicated. Yakov only accepts perfection. Yakov does not brook argument or struggle. Victor lives in an attic bedroom, and Yakov becomes like a second father. Victor has chores and shares in meal-making duties, and they spend the bulk of the time training and refining. 

Yakov teaches Victor the rules of equivalent exchange, that in order to gain he must lose. Victor makes his first ice after three months in July. It’s really more like a mild snowstorm, the slush turning dirty and gray when it accumulates. Yakov nods then redoubles their efforts after that.

Victor makes real ice around October. 

Victor hones it, fine tunes it until he he can make animals, people, weapons, art. One day Yakov comes home from an errand and an elegant crystalline castle fills his backyard, shimmering in the sunset in shades of vibrant purples and oranges with embellished spires reaching up towards the atmosphere. 

Victor’s hair---chin length before---is long now, waist-length and the same color as his work, a hue between platinum and silver befitting his alchemic focus. It takes work---it’s always work, no matter how people who don’t have the touch claim otherwise---but Victor learns more subtleties. He learns how to manipulate the moisture in the air. He learns overcast humid days are best, believe it or not, and he learns that the dry air of winter actually makes it harder. He’s at home in the cold now, his body having learned to adapt by proximity and exposure. 

When Victor is nineteen, Yakov joins him in the study for a cup of mulled wine. “I think you’ve gone as far as you can with me,” he says after a long silence. “I think you need to spread your wings elsewhere.”

Victor nods. He’s right, they’ve both known it for a while. They get drunk together and the following week, Yakov sees him to the train. His ticket is one-way to Central, where he goes to the base and asks how to apply to be a State Alchemist.

Yakov would kill him if he knew because he hates the military dogs, but Victor realizes pragmatically that they can provide resources to further his abilities and research. Besides, he’s an adult, and it’s time he finds his own way, he thinks.

He’s approved to take the exam with the others in six months, and he rents a set of rooms to prepare. He goes to a large park with a lake and practices freezing it a few times a week, altering its shape to make it into a series of twining ramps and stairs. He manages to design a circle Yakov hadn’t created himself, one to alter the water’s composition so when he creates a sword or spear he can have the blades poison-tipped if necessary.

He hears the talk every day---possible war is coming again, Victor having been very young during the battle in Ishval. This time Amestris and Lior struggle for a compromise, and Victor understands if the efforts fail, he’ll be sent to battle. As Yakov says to gain, one must lose...if Victor wants the prestige and the budget, then he will sacrifice some of his autonomy.

Victor pulls his hair up into a high ponytail and admires his work. He made a fountain into a firework display, immutable and untouchable.

“Wow,” says a voice in a hush.

Victor turns with his eyebrow raised. He then stops and stares.

A boy not much younger than him with messy black hair and soft whiskey eyes stares at his handiwork. He’s beautiful, he’s delicate, he’s ordinary---Victor’s palms itch, and he _wants_.

The boy takes Victor in, and his face turns a delicate shade of pink. He swallows and averts his gaze. “Oh. Um. It’s...pretty,” he stammers.

“I’m---” Victor tries to figure out what to say that isn’t a boast. “It’s for the State Alchemist exam. I’m practicing to win my spot.” He closes the distance between them with a smile and a flick of a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. “Victor Nikiforov.”

The boy clears his throat. He makes himself look Victor in the eye again. “Katsuki Yuuri.” He extends a hand, and instead of shaking it, Victor gives into temptation. He rotates Yuuri’s hand so his wrist is face up and presses a soft kiss to his pulse. Yuuri’s flush paints deeper becoming crimson, but he doesn’t jerk away. “I’m---” Yuuri begins. “My family lives near this park. We run an inn, Yu-Topia. You can...I mean---only if you want---or like the idea---or---well---”

“I’d love to,” Victor says.

Yuuri’s posture loosens. “Okay, Victor.”

“Okay, Yuuri,” Victor answers with a smile. Yuuri’s face is all that he sees.

*

_It’s been two years since Victor’s seen anything at all._

_It’s been two years and six months since his soul became nothing but an empty, sad void though he still had his eyes, a fact that is irrelevant as the world turned barren the day his life came to an end._

*

Days are spent practicing, nights talking and bonding with Yuuri. They are much more than friends, but they definitely aren’t lovers, and Victor thinks he has no idea what day or month it is, the clocks and calendar pages alive in a way he’s never felt. The exam creeps ever closer, but now Victor believes he may have something beyond his alchemy to focus on and breathe for.

Instead of sitting in the lounge at the Yu-Topia Inn like usual, Victor and Yuuri walk through a park. A distressed sound catches their ears, and when they search they come across a brown poodle who is underfed and unloved. The dog is afraid but not aggressive, and Victor scoops him into his arms as they get him back to Victor’s apartment. They feed him some bread and cheese Victor keeps in his icebox, calming him with kind words and soft touches. 

The dog---more of a puppy, really---trusts them quickly, and before long he’s asleep in a makeshift bed of extra quilts and sheets. Yuuri sits next to Victor as they watch him, thigh to thigh, shoulder to shoulder, and Victor looks at him for a while. He doesn’t intend to, but he plucks away Yuuri’s glasses and for the first time he sees his unobstructed face.

He's lovely, Victor thinks.

Yuuri’s eyes are wide and owlish, but with surprising boldness he unties Victor’s hair. It falls around the two of them like a gossamer curtain, like they can use it to hide from Victor’s impending test, the world, and everything in between. Victor doesn’t honestly know who makes the move,---maybe it’s Yuuri, probably it’s both, but then they’re kissing, a love’s first kiss that stirs his soul and lights his heart.

They don’t make love that night, but they rest together on Victor’s only-big-enough-for-one-really bed and they entwine their fingers, they press their mouths together a thousand times, and when the sun rises Yuuri reluctantly departs, Victor not letting go of his hand until he can no longer reach.

It’s funny how something so small can change a life, how something like a stray dog now named Makkachin who is bright-eyed and at a fighting weight and a kiss from a boy with sweet brown eyes can alter his destiny so much.

*

_The sickness is hard when he isn’t around, but Yuuri always hates being coddled. As much as Yuuri believes himself to be weak, he is so, so strong, and Victor spends their years together in awe of this boy-turned-into-a-man with such a will._

_He doesn’t---will never---understand what he or Yuuri did to deserve this._

_It spreads to his legs and lungs and even his head, this bright eyed star that fades into a gaping singularity in Victor’s heart. He still laughs, oh how he still laughs and smiles, and he feels so small in Victor’s arms, and Makkachin will not leave his side for even an instant._

_Chris comes often these days, both to help Yuuri have a semblance of normalcy and to prop Victor up because he knows if he falls down he may not stand again._

_They wake Yuuri up for what they ends up being his final injection, and Victor rests his head over his heart, the blue jacket with its brass buttons and medals hanging off the back of a chair by the window._

_”Victor," Yuuri begins, and Chris inhales, saying some excuse Victor doesn’t hear as he leaves. “Victor...I wrote you something.”_

_Victor swallows. He knows---he knows immediately from the way Yuuri’s voice fades, the light darkening in his eyes. Makkachin knows too as he shifts further up the bed from Yuuri’s feet to lie as much as he can on his chest without restricting his breathing._

_”It’s in the nightstand,” Yuuri continues. “It’s a thank-you note.”_

_Victor realizes then the tears will not stop even though he didn't feel them start. He doesn’t speak, just kisses his hair. “Yuuri...I should thank you. Before you, all I knew was my work. You taught me how to live and...you gave me love.”_

_Yuuri’s smile regains a bit of lustre. “Don’t take your eyes off me, okay? Don’t...take your eyes off me.”_

_He doesn’t. Not even when Chris returns and realizes Yuuri passed, not even when the coroner drives the body to the morgue, not at the funeral, and not at his gravesite until Chris and Georgi carry his weight to Chris’s home._

*

In twelve hours, Victor will report to the military for his exam. He will either be the only one to pass or he will fail with the rest, being given an option to try again next time.

He’s not nervous, not really---Victor doesn’t so much feel nerves like normal people, it’s more he examines what can happen from every possible circumstance to account for corrections on the fly if need be. 

Yuuri sits on his bed with Makkachin, saying loving words and stroking his ears. Victor loses his focus to watch his Yuuri, his heart almost bursting.

Yuuri feels his attention and gives him a long look. He fidgets in his pants pocket, and Victor wonders why. “Victor---” he begins.

“Go on,” he says.

Yuuri pulls the thing out of his pocket---it’s a black velvet box. He opens it and inside sit two matching bands. He selects one and holds it up so Victor can see it clearly, the setting sun glimmering off it like a beacon. “I thought...for good luck, I would give this to you and have one for myself.” 

Victor stares. 

“And---” Yuuri pushes his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “If you win...if you pass...then...would you marry me?”

Victor stands and takes the ring. It fits on his right ring finger. Then he slides the second band onto Yuuri’s. “What if I marry you regardless?”

Yuuri smiles, his eyes bright and watery. “It’s called incentive. Pass the test, become the new State Alchemist, and we’ll marry next month when you get your assignment.”

Victor presses their palms together with the brightest smile he’s ever had. Yuuri takes advantage, slipping his fingers in-between Victor’s to bind them together. Makkachin smiles with a wagging tail, and Victor can no longer contain himself, his veins buzzing with love. “Yuuri!”

He tackles him to the bed, and a laughing Yuuri doesn’t push away his kisses or caresses. It’s different this time, his heart dancing as Yuuri reverses their position, setting his glasses on the bedside table. He brushes the long strands off Victor’s face, and his normally somewhat-shy Yuuri blossoms, taking them further than ever before, Victor’s soul soaring as they join for the first time in such quiet intimacy.

He’s in love, he’s so in love, and Yuuri feels the same, and Victor arrives for his test floating on air. He is shown to the exam yard, and while he doesn’t stare, two competitors catch his eye. The first is a loud man who is tall with black hair shaved at the sides. He mentions to anyone who will listen about how he, JJ, will be the new State Alchemist easy.

The other is a boy with pale shoulder-length blond hair and piercing green eyes. He looks at everyone around him like a stray cat that’s been abused, practically hissing when someone steps too near. He can’t be older than twelve, Victor notes, and he wonders how someone so young can be so jagged and hard.

There’s other people of course: some young, some old, some women and some men. 

The Fuhrer is present, which is remarkable but not unexpected. A man in a blue suit stands to his left, not looking at anyone or anything but his notepad, his thick black brows focused on his task. Fuhrer Cialdini gives them a warm welcome, and they are to proceed with their demonstrations in the correct order.

A boy with golden and red hair uses alchemy to create music as the opener, and the Fuhrer is pleased but not moved. A sandy-haired man with a beard makes something akin to robots, and they follow his movements like shadows. A red-haired man with violet eyes creates renewable fuels, and Victor for the first time questions if he’ll pass. A black-haired girl with the same eyes as the previous contestant creates a form of electricity, and he again wonders if he'll be enough.

The young blond boy alters the composition of the field they’re in, changing it abruptly from grass to translucent glass. It takes a lot of effort and he’s visibly sweating and exhausted. The Fuhrer gives him an interested smile.

The loud black-haired man is trying to create flames---but Victor sees the visible panic in his eyes, and when he tries to create a contained bonfire it spirals, his concentration so poor that it becomes a 5-alarm inferno that the military’s emergency services are called for.

They aren’t necessary.

Without even realizing it, Victor snaps into action with an array, changes the content of the moisture and the temperature in the air, and conjures an ice storm that extinguishes the blaze. Yes, it’s not his turn, and yes, he should have asked, but there’s a time to question and a time to act, this emergency falling under the latter.

The commotion dies when the last flame is snuffed, and Victor realizes what he’s done and how he looks. He wipes soot off his cheek. 

Cialdini openly grins. “Well, I think it’s pretty clear who our new State Alchemist is. What’s your name, son?”

Victor brushes his hair out of his face, the ponytail loosening with his frantic movements. “Victor Nikiforov.”

Cialdini nods. “Victor Nikiforov, the Ice Storm Alchemist. Congratulations!”

The military committee and most of the other contestants applaud, including the Fuhrer’s assistant though his face remains impassive. Victor smiles and waves, his heart filling with excitement. He can’t wait to tell Yuuri! He can’t wait to begin his work and get married!

The blond boy makes a low scoff. “Just you wait,” he grumbles within earshot of Victor. “I’ll win next time. You’ll see.”

Victor doesn’t doubt it.

*

_35 litres of water. 20 kg of carbon. 4 L of ammonia. 1.5 kg of lime. 800 g of phosphorous. 250 g of salt. 100 g of saltpeter. 80 g of sulfur. 7.5 g of fluorine. 5 g of iron. 3 g of silicon. 15 traces of other elements._

_Victor gathers these and puts them in the array he drew on the parlor floor. It’s how to make a body---it’s science, nothing more or less. In the back of his mind he realizes he doesn’t know how to make a soul, but he loves Yuuri still so much. That love counts. That love counts to the point where nothing else matters._

_Doesn’t it?_

_It does, Victor reminds himself. It’s everything._

_The gold band he’s never stopped wearing weighs on his finger, a significant burden when he normally doesn’t even recall it being there as it’s so natural, an extension of his form and body._

_Victor’s in his maroon t-shirt, his uniform jacket discarded haphazardly across the room by the fireplace. The day after the funeral when he awoke in Chris’s apartment from a stricken sleep, he hacked off the hair Yuuri loved so much. Why keep it if the one who adored it is gone?_

_Victor withdrew, though Chris reached out as much as time allowed, driving him home from their office every night without a word, a comforting rock in his life to help him up the stairs to the far too large home. Their bed is his and Makkachin’s alone now._

_It’s wrong._

_Victor knows the laws, he knows the taboos, he knows he can lose so much...but the truth is, he already lost everything, his reason to get up and breathe and live. There’s nothing left he'll miss._

_Victor does the motions, ignites the array. He holds his breath and while he doesn’t believe, he prays._

_His prayers are not answered._

_It goes wrong within seconds, an eerie darkling light filling the room, and something appears before him he can’t quite comprehend---is it a Gate? It’s filled with empty souls, its sounds the cries of the damned---_

_Then everything fades into black. He feels something warm run down his cheeks, but he can’t see when he touches his hand to tell what the liquid is. It’s like someone snuffed out all the lights in the room, but he knows, he knows, he **knows** it’s not that._

_There are more noises, crunching inhuman squishes that nauseate him. “Yuuri?”_

_There’s a muffled squelch almost like an answering cry. Makkachin stands in between with loud growls and a stiff posture Victor can sense._

_Oh God, what has he done? What has he done?_

*

Victor left this morning in a pair of pants and a jacket over a violet shirt. Victor returns home in a smart blue and light gray uniform with bars denoting the rank of Major. He’s formally called Ice Storm, but sometimes he will be Major Nikiforov, and he feels a swell of pride at both the new title and earned uniform.

When he steps into the door, Yuuri gives him a head to toe look. He flushes, covering his mouth with his hands to downplay how brightly he grins. “That looks even better than I’d imagined.”

Victor is no longer able to contain his joy---he throws himself at Yuuri, grabbing him and spinning in circles, his hair trailing around them like the ribbons on a maypole. Yuuri laughs, so musical and bright, and when they’re both too dizzy to stay still, Victor kisses his breath away.

The wedding is small and outdoors, Yuuri’s family and childhood friends in attendance. Victor’s parents come, as does Yakov in addition to Victor’s fellow cohort in the military: Chris, Georgi, and Mila. Everyone has a wonderful time, their love celebrated by all in attendance, and Victor actually gets approval to take some leave for a proper honeymoon.

They ride gondolas in Aquroya, the sunset turning Yuuri’s eyes to gold, and Victor never knew he could love this much, but then he wakes up and loves more every day they spend together.

The military decides to keep Victor in Central for the time being, and they get a cute brick house with a yard for Makkachin to roam around. Victor’s salary is more than enough for comfort and some considered extras, so Yuuri minds the home and their dog while Victor spends his days in an office or at a range making ice projectiles while Chris empties his Glock into a target blindfolded with a saucy grin and Georgi (who can’t use a gun to save his life) acquits himself admirably with a pair of daggers.

Time moves forward, and Victor manages to keep his position, impressing the board more and more each time though he feels a bit strained, a bit bored. He’s not surprising them after a while, and while he makes significant advances in his research he wonders how long it’ll suffice.

The year after he gets his title, the loud alchemist with the explosion is selected to be the King Crimson Alchemist. He has his panic and his fire under control, but he doesn’t interact with Victor much since he gets assigned to the South. 

The second year, the blond boy with the bitter disposition returns. There’s something different about the way he moves---it’s like one arm is heavier than the other. He wears long sleeves and gloves in spite of the weather, and how he passes the exam is nothing short of a miracle: alchemy without a circle. He claps his hands and transmutes what he needs from a log, and the board is stunned.

Victor learns his name then: Yuri Plisetsky. He’s now the Glass Tiger Alchemist. 

And somehow, for some reason...he ends up reporting to Victor.

Which, honestly, is awful for all involved.

Yuri seems to hate him---he calls him a nag, ignores his advice, shuns his support. He seems to tolerate Mila and acts diffident to Chris and Georgi. Victor gets fed up and sends his orders through Mila after half a year, no longer willing to entertain the poor attitude. Yuri’s mission is to find the Philosopher’s Stone. It seems like an impossible dream, but Victor sees a benefit in letting him go on recon around the continent in case the tensions with Lior further escalate.

He tells Yuuri about the happenings in the office, and one day he comes to surprise Victor with a lunch date while Yuri happens to be there. They size each other up, and Yuri seems to find his love wanting. It’s almost a bridge too far for Victor, but Yuuri soothes him, and they eat at an outdoor bistro table while sharing a pot of tea and some biscuits. 

The next time Victor sees Plisetsky, his long sleeves are rolled up and his glove is off. Victor sees the answer to his question regarding his movements---at some point he lost an arm, probably in an accident which would explain the gap in his attempts at the exam, and he has replaced it with automail. “Yuri,” he says, his voice kind. “How did you---”

“It’s not your concern!” Yuri snaps. He covers the metal. “You didn’t see this.” He storms out. 

There’s no stigma about automail---it’s a widely accepted medical procedure, so how he lost it is the cause for his shame. Victor can’t help wonder for the rest of the day, and he’s quiet at dinner even though Yuuri made his favorite roast. Yuuri asks halfway into the meal, and Victor explains what he saw. Yuuri’s face grows serious and a bit pale.

“What?”

Yuuri clears his throat. “What if...you’re not supposed to play God, right? Did Yuri lose someone he couldn’t bear to live without?”

Victor looks at Yuuri---not because his idea is crazy, but because it’s not. He wonders how he didn’t think of it. People have tried, they’ve always tried, and the stories are told to young alchemy students as cautionary tales. To gain, one must lose. If one loses and tries to regain, one will sacrifice. When you sacrifice, it comes as a punishment...it is a loss of the thing tied to your loved one the most.

His heart breaking for his young charge, Victor wonders who a boy filled with bitterness could love with such ferocity he’d sacrifice so much.

*

_Victor managed to stumble to his phone and call Chris. He comes within thirty minutes, but Victor can’t see him enter. He can hear that there’s two set of feet, one whose steps are lighter than the other, but he doesn’t know who Chris would have included._

_”You’re a damn idiot,” the second person says. It’s Yuri Plisetsky. “Nikiforov, can you open your eyes?”_

_Victor thinks he does, and he gets confirmation when Yuri swears loudly and Chris makes a gagging sound._

_“Close them,” Yuri snaps._

_He does._

_Chris regains his composure. “How...what the hell? Who or what did that to him? How’d they just disappear like that?”_

_“It’s the Gate,” Yuri says. “When you try to bring someone back, it takes a piece of you in exchange. It’s how I lost my arm, and Lilia lost stuff that’s been leading her down a slow death for ten years.”_

_In order to gain, one must lose. **Don’t take your eyes off me** echoes in Victor’s memory. All the times in his life the only one he saw was Yuuri do, too._

_Yuri makes a hesitant sound. “Seeing the Gate’s why I don’t need arrays.”_

_“Small mercies,” Chris intones. Victor hears him kneel close. “Victor. You know you weren’t...why, Victor? Why this? Why a choice you can’t take back?”_

_Victor swallows. He wants to cry, but he never will again._

_He didn’t think this through, did he?_

_“He’s my life and my love,” Victor says, his voice hitching from unproductive sobs. He manages by feel to stroke his ring, spinning it on his finger._

_He can’t see it, but he knows Yuri and Chris give each other a look just the same._

*

It’s almost their anniversary, and Victor surprises Yuuri with a bouquet of pink roses. Yuuri’s smile lights up the sky, and Victor treats him to a fancy night out just them. They stay up all night making love, and Victor contemplates possibly adopting a child or two, making them become a full family at last.

Yuuri loses a little weight, but it’s nothing Victor decides. Yuuri has shortness of breath, and Victor sends him to a doctor. Yuuri dies around the following anniversary, the same people in attendance at his funeral as their wedding with the addition of Yuri.

Victor almost loses his position as a State Alchemist when he shows up to work with a silk sash covering his eyes. He can hear better and sense objects like he couldn’t before, and when he’s challenged by Yuri to keep his position per an outdated rule involving trial by combat, they end in a draw despite Victor’s disadvantage.

Yuri’s soft punch to his shoulder tells Victor he did it for him more than himself, and he gives him a nod and a brittle smile as thanks. Yuri heads out then, back to his home town to get his automail adjusted by Otabek for his recent growth, and Victor for the first time finds it hard to bear his absence.

When he returns, an encounter in his report doesn’t make sense.

Victor’s learned braille in short order, and so as he reads Yuri’s report, he pauses. “A monster?” he asks incredulously.

He hears Yuri slam his booted feet up onto his desk and makes a disapproving face. “Yeah. The guy couldn’t have been older than me, to be honest. All black outfit slick like oil, pale skin, weird brown hair with these strange lowlights, and freckles across his nose. He had a red mark on his forearm like an ouroboros. Said I was supposed to call him Wrath.”

Victor’s fingers continue to glide over the paper. Yuri’s always detailed, perhaps too much so.

“He stole a bunch of the red stones, almost killed me in the process,” Yuri continues. “He’s a little thing, though. Smaller than me, but you know...if he wasn’t what he was, I’d say he had a kind face.”

Victor nods. “It might be worth sending you back out even though you just arrived. This could be trouble.”

Yuri’s feet land on the floor, the scraping of his seat indicating to Victor as much as the cadence of his steps that he’s leaving. He hears his door open followed by the fabric of Yuri’s overcoat rustling.

“It already is,” Yuri says in a flat voice. Then he’s gone.

Victor keeps this in mind as he works late, Chris at his desk doing the same with a cigarette even though the building is non-smoking. They’re about to leave when something changes---it sounds like a muffled crash coming from the records department. Chris locks and loads, and he and Victor run towards the noise without any consideration that they’re alone. Chris takes the point, giving silent commands to Victor with a two-fingered touch to his shoulder like they’ve practiced. 

“This is boring,” a voice says with a groan. It’s cheerful and sharp at the same time in a decidedly disturbing way. “Why can’t we burn it down and call it a day? Why these particular files? Pride never lets us have a good time, you know. I’m over it.”

Victor senses Chris tense. “No,” he whispers, his voice full of little other than shock. Victor hears his cig fall out of his mouth onto the ground. He shoots an arm out, impeding Victor’s progress. “Get away from here. I’ll take care of this.”

Victor turns to his voice. “What? Chris---”

“Victor, look, I know you outrank me,” Chris says. “Trust me. You need to go. Now.”

Victor is about to argue when he hears him speak.

His voice is oddly flat but dripping with a sensuousness that Victor hears in his dreams still even after all this time, after years of sleeping in half of a bed even though he can now spread out.

The person sighs. “Pride has his reasons, Greed. There’s an order and a sequence, you know this. We’ll get what we want as long as we play follow the leader.”

“Yuuri?” Victor says, his voice bleeding pain and hope. He pushes Chris’s arm away, Chris grabbing the back of his jacket and yanking him out of the room.

There’s a sound like people turning to him. A noise like metal being forged quietly fills the air. “Who?” the cold, familiar voice says. “Who’s Yuuri?”

There’s another louder sound, like stone catching against itself. “Oh look,” the other person (Greed?) says. “Toys! I haven’t gotten to work out in a while, Lust. Can we? Please?”

Lust? 

Chris cocks it and pulls it, the noise reverberating in the air. “You’re not Katsuki Yuuri, I was one of his pallbearers two years ago. Who or what are you?”

The stone scraping sound is back. Greed laughs, oddly musical and joyous. Victor hears movement and four gunshots hitting flesh. The movement slows, but it doesn’t stop, and Chris is there and then gone, Victor hearing the unmistakable sound of a body hitting a solid object and him groaning in pain as he drops to the floor. 

Victor turns back to their antagonists. The one called Greed laughs still, the sound causing him cognitive dissonance because it’s like he’s enjoying children playing instead of celebrating causing Victor’s First Lieutenant grievous harm.

“Yuuri,” Victor tries. “Yuuri, it’s me. It’s Victor.” He lifts his hand and shows off his ring. “Yuuri, have you come back to me? Did it work after all? Was it worth the price I paid?”

He can feel the scrutiny of the other man while Greed continues to laugh. “Wow Lust,” he says, his tone mocking. “Was it worth it? Did you come back to him?”

“Stop it,” Yuuri---Lust says. “I don’t even know his name.”

It’s the same pain as watching him die. Victor almost throws up and falls to the floor. Before he can the air stirs, and something sharp tears through the epaulets on his shoulders, pinning him to a wall. He feels an unnaturally cold breath on his cheek as the monster who wears Yuuri’s face holds his lips barely an inch from his. 

Victor assumes that this is how he will die, and he welcomes it. If his eyes weren’t enough of a price---if the Gate Yuri has mentioned felt the need to give him a twisted copy of his love as further punishment for his mistake and selfishness, he’d much rather die than live in this self-inflicted hell.

This Lust creature still stands too close, like he’s trying to decide exactly how to murder him, perhaps by skinning him or just slow shallow cuts that take hours to finish the job. 

Three more gunshots strike Lust’s torso. Victor feels him jerk with the impact, and the blades retract, setting Victor free. It snaps him out of his despair, and he claps his hands like Yuri showed him, throwing a series of poisoned ice blades into Lust’s body.

Lust’s voice makes a sound full of derision. Victor may as well be able to hear the callous grin and cruel look in his eyes. He can visualize his beautiful Yuuri, his mind twisting his expression, and Victor hates it, hates this vile simulacrum. He’s furious, and he claps and forms a spear. He shifts, runs, and when he strikes, a clash of metal clinks against the ice, holding it in place.

There’s a loud whistle. “This is too hot. You were right the first time---we should have just smashed and grabbed. Pride’s going to be pissed.”

Victor throws his whole weight behind his spear, and he hears Lust drop onto his back on the floor. He kicks Victor’s solar plexus, knocking the air out of him and sending the spear clattering out of his hands. Then he whirls, one of his blades lightly grazing Victor’s cheek. 

“Hm,” he says as he admires his handiwork, the words dripping with honey. “It’s a shame. You have a pretty face---in another life, I might’ve liked you.”

In the process of getting back up, Victor freezes. “In another life, you loved me.”

A window shatters, and Greed whoops as he retreats while Lust silently follows at a slow, deliberate pace. Victor feels him stop at the window to stare at him again.

Then they’re gone, and while Chris favors his left side, they help each other up.

Victor has more questions than he did when the day began. None of them make him happy.

*

_”Will you still love me?” Yuuri ponders as he starts to spend more and more time resting. Victor holds his hands, Makkachin curled up in the middle to comfort them both. “The rest of my life,” Yuuri clarifies. “Will you still love me for the rest of my life?”_

_It’s suddenly hard to breathe._

_Victor gives Yuuri as big a smile as he can manage._

_“No, Yuuri,” Victor says though his vocal cords won’t work right, and his tears sting. He manages to make eye contact, and for a moment, they’re happy again. “I’ll love you for the rest of mine.”_

*

Yuri has been traveling, finding more information about the red stones that can apparently combine to make a Philosopher’s Stone. He encounters a brown-haired boy in a ponytail with tan skin calling himself Envy---he can mimic anything and anyone, primarily communicating in songs. He’s partnered with the Wrath-boy like Yu...Lust is with Greed, and they bested Yuri, shattering his arm in the process.

Fuhrer Cialdini meets with Victor and his unit, explaining that they’ll be required to head into the fray at Lior, and yes this includes Yuri. His assistant stands to his right, Victor knows from his memories, sharply attired as ever and his short, thick black hair falling into his eyes oh-so-artfully. Victor has been told by Mila that Seung-Gil unnerves her since she’s never seen his facial expression shift even the slightest bit whether due to anger, stress, or joy. 

Victor admits she has a point.

They pack their things with Chris helping Victor, and the Katsukis eagerly agree to watch Makkachin for the duration of his deployment. They’ve made sure to keep Victor a part of their lives which he appreciates as his own family is a long distance from Central, and they’ve never asked what happened to his sight. He’s sure that Yuuri’s older sister has an inkling, but she’s never spoken about it---at least not to him.

Cialdini and Seung-Gil get a car to themselves, as does Victor’s unit. Yuri sits by the window watching the scenery shift from verdant hills to sandy dunes. Mila is next to him checking her extra clips while Chris and Georgi play cards, Victor hearing the accusations of cheating back and forth. 

He caresses his ring, spinning it twice. It used to drive Yuuri insane, though Victor wears his as well next to a locket on a thin gold chain. The locket holds a photo of Yuuri at sunrise with clippings of their hair braided together. 

At his request because Chris tried to refrain, Victor received all of the visual details about Greed and Lust. Greed has a darker skintone and is shorter than Lust, with black hair parted neatly on the side; he wears a tight shirt like leather and pants of the same fabric. He has an ability to turn his body into a type of unbreakable stone. Though his laughter sounded genuine, Chris assures Victor that the smile he wears is not.

And as for Lust...he is Yuuri in face and body though not in soul. Lust does not wear glasses and his hair is pushed back instead of messy across his brow. He wears a tight black bodysuit with mesh panels that hug his form befitting his new name, and the knives he used on Victor are actually his morphing red-tipped fingers. 

Since the naming pattern is obvious, Victor knows they have four out of seven. Where are Gluttony, Sloth, and since he is their leader, Pride?

Another State Alchemist opens the door to their car---an older woman who has been called back to active duty under duress. Her name is Okukawa Minako, but she is called the Dancing Alchemist. She sits next to Victor, and he turns to her to be polite.

Minako coughs, and Victor hears Mila hand her something. “Thank you,” she says. She wipes her mouth.

“Keep it, I have others,” Mila replies.

“Thank you,” she reiterates. She reaches across Victor, ostensibly to open a window, and he feels a piece of paper with braille fill his left hand. They all make small talk, and after a half an hour, Minako says, “Oh I forgot the entire reason why I got up! I need to use the bathroom. Excuse me, Colonel.”

Victor nods, and as she exits, he unfolds the paper to read it. _Cialdini can’t be trusted,_ it begins. _Two moles at least. Him probably one. Watch what you say and where._

Victor swallows. 

Things just went from bad to impossible.

*

_Photography is a relatively new invention, and Yuuri becomes quite adept at it. Victor and Makkachin are his favorite subjects, the house filling with prints of them in various emotional states and poses._

_One morning when Victor rises with the sun and catches Yuuri sleeping unaware, he grabs his camera making sure to remember what Yuuri explained and snaps an entire roll of his sleeping beauty._

_He forgets about it until Yuuri goes into his makeshift darkroom a week later, and Victor hears a loud shriek. Yuuri runs out waving a mostly-wet print of his own face bathed in soft, warm light. “Victor!”_

_Victor grins. “Yuuuuuuri.”_

_Yuuri stares at him, his mouth twisting before shifting into a put-upon smile. “You know I hate having my picture taken,” he begins. “I belong behind the lens, not in front of it.”_

_Victor pulls him close, minding the still-wet chemicals on the paper. He nuzzles into Yuuri’s neck. “You’re so beautiful, I couldn’t help it. You have to be permanently preserved, Yuuri. History needs to look back on you and see what I see.”_

_Yuuri sighs and looks to the side. Victor can see the twitching of his lips, though, which means he isn’t upset. “What on Earth am I going to do with you, Colonel?”_

_Victor grins, walks them backwards to the bed. For once Makkachin has not annexed it while the humans do not have it in use, and he tugs on Yuuri so he lands straddling his hips. “I have a list…” Victor says with a cheeky grin._

_He pulls off the glasses and Yuuri kisses him as soon as they’re out of the way, his hands tangling in Victor’s long hair, and Victor’s heart sitting between his husband's lips. They lose themselves in each other, in the taste of each other’s skin until it’s well beyond time to eat and let out the dog._

_Forever isn’t a promise, but not because Victor doesn’t try._

*

The denizens of Lior hate them.

Victor can’t find it in him to disagree.

The climate is too hot and dry, Victor lying in his temporary bed just in his briefs as he fades in and out of a shallow sleep filled with dreams that revolve around his sweet Yuuri and his cold imposter. They switch places and keep him off balance, kind and loving then cruel and seductive. It’s enough he wakes instantly with his heart pounding.

The third time it happens, he can sense he’s not alone. “Chris?”

The person doesn’t speak, but he feels the bed dip with their weight. They feel strangely cold, like an endothermic reaction. Victor’s left hand hides in the sheets, and he subtly claps his fingers against his palm to make a knife. 

A finger traces Victor’s cheekbone up to the blindfold. It freezes there, and then that voice he both despises and aches for says, “Blue. I remember the color blue, like a piece of riverglass...must be your eyes.”

The voice remains impersonal, and Victor clutches his knife tighter. “Once upon a time, yes.”

“There was a dog,” Lust continues. “Is he alive?”

“Yes,” Victor replies. “Makkachin is good. He’s in good health.”

Lust’s fingers glide back down to trace the line of Victor’s jaw. He’s shocking in his tenderness, and Victor isn’t sure how to process it.

“I hate you,” Lust says, though his tone softens the words. “Ever since I saw your face, I can’t get you out of my head. I had a purpose, and now it means nothing. I’ll see or hear certain things, and I get lost in a memory that doesn’t even feel like mine. It’s maddening, and it’s all your fault.”

“I love you,” Victor admits without thinking. “I told you I would the rest of my life.”

The hand freezes, and before Victor can react, Lust moves like lightning, straddling his chest and his fingers becoming the claws, two stabbing next to Victor’s ear through the mattress. “Free me from this. Leave me be,” he says, but his voice isn’t sure or steady like it was a moment ago.

“Kill me,” Victor says. “It’d be a mercy, really. I can’t see you, but I’m tortured by what you are the same. I’m in hell because of what I’ve done to us. So go ahead---I won’t stop you.”

Lust bends down and takes Victor’s bottom lip between his (Victor now realizes) inhumanly sharp teeth, and bites so hard Victor tastes the blood that spills down his chin. The jerk of pain causes him to act out of reflex, and he stabs Lust in the back with the dagger in his palm. Lust hisses, transmutes his claws back into a fist, and decks Victor across the cheek.

Victor claps and makes a Bowie knife and stabs Lust in between two of his ribs where his heart is. 

Or...where it should be.

Lust laughs, and Victor hears the knife squelch out of his body. There’s a faint sound of flesh moving over ice and Victor realizes Lust is licking the blade. Victor takes advantage and tackles the monster on his back on the bed, reversing their positions. Lust reaches up to grab him, yanking the chain around Victor’s neck, and the locket and ring clatter to the floor beside the bed. 

Lust makes a sound like he’s ill, his body going stiff like it has rigor mortis before convulsing. Victor pauses. “Lust?”

“Get it away,” Lust grinds out.

Get what away? Victor leans over the bed and feels around for two minutes before he has the ring and locket in his grasp. The locket’s popped open, and the pad of his finger brushes against the ebony and silver strands housed inside. 

Wait.

“Is it the hair?” Victor asks. He brings his hand in close to his chest, the jewelry pressing to his heart. “You can’t be near your own hair?”

Lust manages to slap the locket out of his hand, Victor hearing the metal clang against the far wall. Lust’s breathing becomes normal again. 

Sensing the swing of his arm, Victor manages to roll away from Lust before the ice knife can make contact. Victor kicks Lust in the wrist, sending the knife across the room. He claps at the same moment Lust morphs his fingers, and he points a saber at Lust’s throat as one of Lust’s claws pokes barely into his Adam’s apple. 

They’re in a standoff.

The door bursts open, and Victor recognizes the sound of Mila’s boots. Unlike Chris she dual wields, and he can hear her take the safeties off both guns. “Get off him or I’ll end you right here,” she says, Victor knowing her eyes are locked on Lust.

“Just a friendly chat,” Lust chirps. “I was about to leave anyways.”

Victor lets his guard down, lowering his blade. He can’t see what happens but he hears the boom of the shots, he feels Lust jerk as the bullets penetrate. “Mila, don’t---!”

Lust makes a low hmph and kicks Victor hard, then there’s the sound of his boots across the floor as Mila empties both clips into him right as the window shatters. Victor hears the distant sound of a body hitting the ground, and he runs to the window even though he can’t see Lust vanish into the darkness.

Mila drops the empty clips onto the floor. “Boss---”

Victor doesn’t answer. He grips the windowsill, his hands getting splinters from a gash that Lust made with a claw. He wishes---now more than ever---he could still cry.

Every time he thinks he has run out of grief, his heart splinters anew.

*

_Victor comes home that day, managing to get off a bit early. He swings by a market down a few blocks from his home, and he picks up a bouquet of two-dozen red and lavender roses. He hums, nodding hello to neighbors and shopkeepers as he enjoys the bright sun on his walk._

_When he unlocks his front door, before he can call for Yuuri and Makkachin, he hears a song play on the phonograph in their parlor. The song is one Victor recalls being popular when he left home to study with Yakov, and he leans against the doorframe with a smile as he watches the scene before him._

_Yuuri is dancing._

_Victor knew Yuuri is a wonderful dancer---they shared many at their wedding, though Victor can only truly recall the first---and a few before that on evenings out._

_Yuuri moves like liquid, his hips rotating with ease and care, swaying with the beat as his arms move beside and above his head like a beckoning gesture of seduction. Victor’s mouth goes dry as his steps take him across the room without noticing his husband._

_Victor wonders if it’s too soon to retire as a State Alchemist and draw a pension so he can spend every moment with this irresistible fae creature he somehow got to love him in return._

_“Are you going to just watch all night?” Yuuri says without turning around, his voice a teasing lilt with a bubbling laugh at the end of his words._

_“I was trying to surpise you,” Victor says with a laugh of his own. “Instead you got the drop on me.”_

_Yuuri turns around and dances to him, pulling him into an embrace as they whirl around the room, Victor with one hand behind his back holding the bouquet. Yuuri spins them until they’re in front of the couch, and Victor lets him have the roses. Yuuri’s movements stutter to a halt and he flushes a pretty shade of pink as he lets go of his husband to inhale their fragrance._

_“I should put these in a vase,” Yuuri says._

_Victor strokes his face with his gloved hands. He bends down to kiss him at last, a craving he felt all during the course of his work day. They break apart, and Yuuri ducks his head down, oddly shy after the dancing he just finished. He blushes and leaves, giving Victor a look full of love as he walks away._

_Victor mostly forgot about the roses until a wreath of white ones lay on top of a matching, polished casket._

*

The Dancing Alchemist comes to Victor a second time, when he and Yuri are alone and a distance away from eavesdroppers and prying eyes. Yuri transmuted a canteen of water into some kind of rancid hooch, and while Victor knows he shouldn’t encourage underage drinking, he can’t be pressed to care as they share its contents. 

Minako sits to his left---he recognizes her perfume from the train. Yuri hands her the canteen in front of Victor’s chest, and she takes a sip. Then she laughs and coughs at the same time. “Nice,” she says with a dry chuckle.

Victor shrugs and smiles as Yuri makes a low-pitched laugh.

Minako nudges Victor. “I knew him, you know. Your husband. I’ve been a friend of his mother since we were teenagers and though I hadn’t seen him since he was ten, I knew him. I regret not making it to the wedding or the funeral, and I’m so very sorry.”

Victor nods as Yuri grows somber.

She tosses her hair, and the tips brush against Victor’s shoulder. “Your vision...it was your payment, wasn’t it?”

“My eyes,” Victor explains. “Even apparently the nerves that would connect to my brain.”

“It was gross,” Yuri adds, helpful as always. He takes the hooch back from Minako and helps himself to a long swig.

Minako makes a sound. “The Gate’s got a sadistic sense of humor, all right.” She sighs as Victor takes a drink, pulling a face even though it’s at least the twelfth sip he’s taken. “Your arm then, too, Glass Tiger?”

Victor hears the sound of fabric against steel. He can sense Yuri’s posture change. “My grandfather,” Yuri says, so soft Victor almost can’t hear. “He was all I ever had.”

A terrible foreboding crashes into Victor like a wave at high tide. Three unaccounted for Homunculi (Yuri came to find that term in research published by Nicholas Flamel himself), and Victor knows one is a result of human transmutation. He swallows thick saliva and realizes he doesn’t know if anyone explained to Yuri that the Lust Homunculus wears the form of his dead husband.

There’s a rumbling in the distance that Victor thinks is thunder. His companions standing up in shock tells him otherwise. “What?” he says as he follows suit. 

There’s a loud boom, and Victor turns to it cursing the lack of his eyes. A pair of booted feet comes running up to them. “Base is under attack,” the man shouts, and it takes Victor a moment to recognize the King Crimson Alchemist. “It’s like a mercenary team of monsters!”

Oh no, Victor thinks as he hears Yuri stand taller. Before he can warn him, the kid runs into the fray. Victor and Minako chase after him, and another loud boom sounds. There’s a horrific sound of crunching, like something is being eaten, and when the three of them arrive on the scene, Victor can tell Yuri is frozen in horror.

“Grandpa,” the kid says in flat disbelief before choking. “Grandpa…”

Minako does something that Victor can’t see, but he hears the result---a tinkering noise like crystals slicing through skin. The King Crimson Alchemist snaps his fingers, and Victor feels as well as hears the air spark into flames, though they move into a different place hammering two others. 

“Wrath and Envy,” Minako says. “You must be Gluttony.”

Victor claps a spear out of ice. Yuri remains frozen, though Victor can hear anguished sobs wracking his torso.

“Of course he is,” says a voice that has to be the same age, maybe even younger than Yuri. “What’d you expect? The Seven Heavenly Virtues?”

“It’s not a big deal, Wrath,” calls the other one with a musical lilt. His voice is more mature, similar to King Crimson’s in timber and age. He hops back and forth, before he does something that makes Minako let out a horrified gasp as Yuri chokes, clapping his hands over his face.

Envy sounds disaffected and sensual like Lust. “Oh you poor darlings,” he says. “It’s so difficult isn’t it, seeing your loved ones this way. I bet it’s too hard for you to even lift a finger to stop us.” 

“Nah,” says King Crimson Alchemist, Leroy rather as Victor recalls his name. He snaps both hands and fire explodes thrice in succession. Though this time, Victor hears someone tackle Leroy to the ground. “What the hell---”

“Leave my Gradpa out of it!” Yuri screams. “Leave him alone! Stop it, you shithead!”

Victor hears his flesh hand connect with Leroy’s jaw. “Jesus, kitten,” he replies with noticeable shock. “I’m doing my job, which is more than I can say about you!”

“Yuri,” Victor says. His placid tone derails Yuri’s rage. “Yuri, he isn’t your grandpa. You know this from what you read in Flamel’s research.”

He feels and hears a shorter person get in his personal space. Yuri’s face is close to Victor’s, and the heat of his rage radiates off him in waves. “How does that make it right?”

Victor recalls the night before, Lust pinning him and biting his lip until he bled. “It doesn’t. It won’t,” Victor says as much for himself as his charge. He sees a vision of his sweet, quiet Yuuri morphing into Chris’s description of the cold, calculated Lust. “But we have to anyways.”

A man clears his throat nearby. They all turn---Minako makes a frustrated sound. “What is going on?” says Lee Seung-Gil in his distinct monotone. 

Leroy isn’t in on how they cannot trust other people, Victor realizes too late as he speaks. “Monsters called after the Sins, sir.”

Victor hears Seung-Gil crack his neck, and for some reason the sound reminds him of water hitting metal, like heavy rain against a house with aluminum siding. “How about that.” Noise like a waterfall fills the air, and when it’s done, Leroy swears and Minako gasps. Seung-Gil sounds like he speaks while submerged. “We have a name. We’re Homunculi.”

Damn.

Before any of them move, they’re imprisoned in standing water bubbles. He’s drowning them, Victor thinks in a panic as he thrashes to escape. The Fuhrer’s assistant has been a monster this whole time, and he’s drowning them.

Gunshots from three weapons Victor knows intimately catch Seung-Gil, followed by the slashing sounds of Georgi’s knives. Seung-Gil or whatever his other name is loses his concentration, freeing the four of them. More shots boom into the air, and the other three collapse too. 

Victor hears Leroy spit something sodden onto the ground followed by the flick of a Zippo. The screams of Wrath and Envy overpower the sound of an explosion, and then he hears a squelching like viscous puddles. Victor hears the delicate sounds of Minako’s alchemy as she whirls and shreds Gluttony in spite of a weak protest from Yuri. 

Victor claps and forms a spear, throwing it at Seung-Gil. He hears the sound of it flying through liquid. Well, he is the Ice Storm Alchemist for a reason. Seung-Gil is some type of liquid...this isn’t any different than the fountain all those years ago.

He concentrates, claps his hands, and holds his palms up in the direction he heard the spear pass. A loud cracking fills the air as Victor feels snow flurries drift down onto his face. Seung-Gil begins to scream before it’s cut off like his voicebox is frozen.

Which it is.

Victor finishes his job, and Seung-Gil is frozen solid, like an overly complicated ice sculpture for an event. Yuri swears next to him, also clapping his hands and then he’s gone, the next thing Victor hears is a sound of a large object shattering into pieces. Leroy flicks his lighter and Victor hears that squelch he heard with the others.

That leaves Gluttony.

Yuri turns, Victor can hear his weapon cut the air. This Homunculus has been silent compared to the others, and before anyone can move Yuri cries out, “Grandpa!”

Gluttony shuffles, kicking up some sand and debris. Victor can sense they are staring each other down. He hears Yuri cry out, and then he runs. There’s a sound like flesh and bone being sawed through, and something heavy hits and rolls across the ground. Leroy flicks the lighter and there’s fire followed by sounds of the thick liquid.

Yuri’s weapon drops to the ground as he falls next to it on his knees. He’s wracked with sobs, biting out curse words and pounding the ground with his fists. Someone runs to him, and when she speaks, Victor realizes it’s Mila. Yuri cries louder, a scream ripping out of his throat, and then suddenly he goes silent.

“Yuri---” Victor says, not sure how to continue.

“You knew, didn’t you?” Yuri rasps. 

Victor can feel Chris and Minako’s eyes bore into him. “I knew that Yuuri is Lust. I knew nothing else. Nothing about any of them---never encountered Gluttony until just now, had no idea about Seung-Gil, don’t know who the last one is.”

“But you knew what made those--- _things_!” Yuri snaps.

Victor hedges. “It only occurred to me right before this fight that you could have made one like I did. I’ve honestly assumed it was a punishment for me alone, for my inability to...let go. I never thought that you would suffer the same fate. Otherwise I’d have said something.”

“Kind of arrogant to assume you’re that unique,” Minako can’t help but point out. Victor would normally take offense, but really he cannot. It’s true.

Yuuri makes a _tch_ noise. “Whatever. We need to find the other three and put them down.” 

The vibe of the conversation drastically shifts, descending into a stiff tension as Victor feels everyone’s eyes on him.

“All of them,” Yuri reiterates with his voice laced with steel. “Every last one.”

*

_It’s a Sunday afternoon, bright, sunny, and just warm enough, when Yuuri leans back into Victor’s arms on a blanket in a clearing. They took a short drive barely out of the city to a beautiful field filled with wildflowers, and as far as Victor is concerned, they're the last humans on Earth._

_Makkachin alternates between happily romping and lying on the blanket looking at his humans with a bright smile and wagging tail. Victor feeds Makkachin some of the meat from their lunch much to Yuuri’s disapproval._

_He covers his mouth to stifle the laughter when he sees Yuuri giving Makkachin an even bigger treat because he thinks Victor isn’t looking._

_Makkachin runs to chase a squirrel he caught in his sights, and Yuuri rests his head against Victor’s chest. “Less scratchy than what you usually wear,” he teases._

_“I didn’t design the uniform,” Victor counters with a smile. “I can compose a strongly worded letter, I think. The wool does get rather hot this time of year.”_

_Yuuri presses their chests together. He reaches up like always and takes down Victor’s ponytail. He combs the long locks, Victor suppressing shudders when his fingers drift over the sensitive skin of his scalp. Yuuri buries his face in Victor’s neck and breathes against the junction of his shoulder._

_Victor’s face heats. “Yuuri---”_

_Yuuri smiles into his throat. “I always want you so much, but somehow I love you even more.” Victor clutches the back of Yuuri’s---it’s actually Victor’s, now that he looks---shirt to try to pull him closer._

_“I know the feeling,” Victor says. “My heart gets flooded.”_

_“Your basement, too,” Yuuri quips._

_Victor starts. “Did you---”_

_Yuuri snickers, setting his glasses out of the way on the basket._

_“Yuuuuuri!” Victor exclaims with delight. He laughs and holds him tighter as Yuuri’s snickers turn into crowing. “Now I love you even more!”_

_Yuuri pulls back enough to look him in the eye. He brushes the hair off Victor’s face for a clear view of him. Victor takes his hands and entwines their fingers, running his thumbs over the outside of Yuuri’s. Yuuri’s smile outshines the brightest sun, and Victor thinks that this is it, this is the moment he would choose to last for eternity if he had the power to do so._

_After receiving only two token and flagrantly half-hearted protests, he beds Yuuri on the blanket in the shade of an oak tree. Makkachin has the grace to leave them alone, napping nearby in a patch of daisies._

_They put themselves back in order as the clouds fill the sky, and they run laughing to the car as the rain begins to fall. Makkachin is less than amused, vocalizing his displeasure with huffy canine sounds of distress._

_Victor’s hair when wet is closer to the gray of gunmetal than it is the usual platinum, and Yuuri’s eyelashes have droplets beading in them like round pieces of quartz. They pack the car, Victor turning on the heat when he hears Yuuri shiver, and before they drive home they kiss at least five times._

_Makkachin grumbles the whole way._

*

Victor stands on a balcony for some fresh air. The desert smells like heat and sand, and he hates it more than he did this morning.

Chris stands next to him and lights a cigarette. Victor hears him take a long drag followed by an exhale. He’s nudged in the arm and Victor pulls the cig from his fingers, taking a hit of his own. 

“You usually refuse,” Chris remarks with a touch of good humor.

Victor shrugs and exhales. He coughs---just once. “Yuuri hated smoking.”

“I remember,” Chris says as Victor passes the cigarette back to him. “Anytime I came over, he made me go out back. Wasn’t allowed to leave the butts on your back steps, either.”

“He could be fussy,” Victor agrees. Hospital corners every time they made the bed, always sorting light and dark laundry, immediate cleanup of Makkachin’s overenthusiastic drinking...that was his Yuuri.

Chris takes another drag. “You gonna be able to do what Yuri did?”

Victor freezes.

He feels Chris scrutinizing him for at least five minutes. He’s finished the cigarette and he stubs it out before lighting a second. “Victor.”

“I don’t know,” Victor says. “I want to say yes...but I don’t know. I can’t promise anything.” Chris makes a disapproving sound, and Victor drops his head for a moment before unceremoniously unsnapping his jacket. “What do you want from me, Chris?”

“For you to remember that you have a duty,” Chris says. “I didn’t take you to the mat the way I should have when you tri... _did_ bring him back, but I sure as hell wanted to. The fact that you thought that made sense at all...I get Yuri doing it, he’s a kid and impetuous, but you?”

“You don’t understand,” Victor says.

“I definitely don’t,” Chris replies with a note of bitterness. “Violating God’s own natural laws because you were widowed, yeah I can’t make sense of that.”

“Shut up.” Victor clenches his fists and grinds his teeth.

“No, I won’t,” Chris says, his voice gaining strength. “Life goes on, Victor, it goes on, and it gets better. Would Yuuri have wanted you to do what you did? Did you ever stop and ask if Yuuri would have wanted you to bring him back?”

The fight drains out of Victor. He hadn’t. He’d been so wrapped up in himself, in his loneliness and pain, he never gave any consideration if Yuuri would even want to come back. He never once entertained the notion of how Yuuri would feel if he had been successful. All he cared about was easing his own suffering---he never considered Yuuri being fine with his eternal rest.

He never considered Yuuri would want him to try to find a different happiness, to live again without him.

“Didn’t think so,” says Chris. He stubs out his cig, and Victor hears him pocket his lighter. “Victor---Colonel Nikiforov…” 

Victor takes a deep breath.

“You know it’s going to come down to it. So you better ask yourself if you can do what needs to be done.” Chris walks off the balcony, leaving Victor alone. Victor reaches to his neck where he has the repaired chain once again. He touches Yuuri’s ring then the locket.

Victor thinks while the evening light fades into darkness, feeling the air drop in temperature as he can’t see the sky change. He lets go of the ring and pendant.

“I don’t want to,” he says out loud. “But I will.”

*  
_Yuuri doesn’t anger easily. When he does, he tends to be placid and cold like Victor’s alchemy, cutting to the bone and petty like a child._

_When the doctor tells them how much time Yuuri has left, something in him is different than any other instance Victor’s seen him. His jaw has a tic in it as Victor thanks the doctor for her time and drives them back to the house. He settles Yuuri to rest on the couch and puts a kettle on to make him some of his favorite tea._

_The water just barely has made the kettle whistle when Victor hears something shatter against a wall. Alarmed, he runs into the parlor to see Yuuri’s thrown a blue glass vase filled with Get Well flowers from Victor’s mother. “Yuuri---”_

_Yuuri doesn’t hear him, picking up a decorative plate that was a wedding gift. It also shatters against the wall from Yuuri pitching it like a baseball, like it’s nothing, like it’s perfectly ordinary he’s destroying objects in their home._

_“Yuuri!” Victor tries again. Truthfully, he’s frightened._

_Yuuri throws a picture frame, shattering its glass when it impacts against the wall. He throws another. Then he throws the table lamps._

_It is then that Victor notices the bitter, furious tears leaking out of his eyes and sees the grimace across his lips._

_Victor runs before he can shatter a mirror, wrapping his arms around him. Yuuri shakes and openly sobs, losing the power to stand as his knees give out. Victor falls with him, holding him close on the ground as he strokes his hair and tries to soothe him. “Yuuri. My darling.”_

_“It’s not fair!” Yuuri says. “I don’t smoke, I don’t really drink...I don’t do anything I shouldn’t! Why did this happen? Why me? Why us?”_

_Victor rocks him back and forth. “I don’t know,” he answers._

_Yuuri wipes his mouth with the back of one hand, and Victor can feel more than ever he’s lost too much weight too quickly. “It’s not right. It’s bullshit.”_

_“It is, darling,” Victor agrees. It is, he thinks as his mouth tastes like copper and salt._

_Yuuri attempts speech, but what comes out instead is a cross between a scream and a sob. He trembles in Victor’s arms until he exhausts himself, completely cried out and drained of his rage._

_Victor kisses his hair, his eyelids, his nose. “Come, let’s put you to bed.”_

_Yuuri swallows, wincing from the pain of his screams. Victor helps him up the stairs, stripping him out of his sweater and pants before fluffing pillows and adding blankets. Makkachin, who hid during the destruction, comes quietly from their closet and hesitantly joins Yuuri on the bed._

_Yuuri’s face is a masterclass of pain. Victor begins to stand but he grips his hand. “Please,” Yuuri says. “Don’t leave me alone.”_

_Victor nods and strips off his uniform. He gets in bed with Yuuri, who tucks his head under his chin. After a few minutes, Yuuri begins to sob once more, quieter and more desperate than angry this time._

_Victor doesn’t cry, not yet. He’ll do it another time, just like he’ll wait to clean up the chaos downstairs._

*  
It shouldn’t be a surprise that Lust visits again, but Victor doesn’t anticipate it regardless.

This time though, Lust waits in his room. Victor shuts his door before he notices, undoing the fastenings on his jacket. He throws it onto his makeshift desk when he realizes there’s a presence in the room beside himself, one at this point he can recognize. “What do you want?” he asks without even turning around.

“You took out four of us,” Lust says as if describing a cloud shaped like a lion. “How’d you find out the secret?”

“What secret?” Victor asks. Even though he has no clue, he makes his words sound fake.

It works. “How our lives run out if you wound us one too many times,” Lust says. “You know about our remains stunning us. How’d you figure out the thing about our lives?”

That would explain why all the bullets and stabbings led to their destruction with Leroy’s flames. “Lucky guess,” Victor says. Yuri let him keep the canteen of the hooch as a peace offering. He opens it and takes a long pull. Without realizing he’s done it until it’s too late, he offers the booze to Lust. 

There’s a moment’s hesitation, but Lust takes the offered booze and swigs out of the canteen. He doesn’t complain like Yuuri would have as he hands it back. “The next time we fight, it’s you or me, you know,” Lust says.

Victor sits in his chair opposite Lust on his bed. The tone of his voice doesn’t match the words he used---he sounds...sad. He sounds like his resolve is cracking. Maybe Yuuri is inside him after all. “I know.”

“I should just do it now,” Lust says. “I’ve already almost managed.”

“Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades,” Victor points out.

“I can do it any time,” Lust claims, disregarding his comment.

“Okay. Then go ahead,” Victor goads in reply. He sits, hands folded primly in his lap as he waits for the claws to pierce his body, for Lust to snap his neck, for anything, any kind of violence or attack.

He gets chilled skin caressing his cheekbones, thumbs tracing them like a long-lost love. Then his hands move to the back of Victor’s hair where he unties the gray silk sash around his head. It falls almost silently to the floor, and Victor makes a point to keep his eyes closed.

Lust makes a soft sound. “I wanted to see your whole face,” he says. His fingers trace Victor’s uncovered brow, sliding across the bridge of his nose to pet his silver lashes. “I was right the first time I saw you---you are incredibly pretty.”

His skin is cold like a corpse, but Victor feels the heat between them anyways. Lust’s fingers drop down to his lips, thumbs pulling across his bottom one, and Victor fights not to suck one into his mouth. 

“I don’t love you,” Lust says. His voice wavers like a child.

“You know how I feel,” Victor replies, the words almost stuck in his throat. 

The kiss feels like one of Yuuri’s but doesn’t, it’s both soft like his but cold and too much in addition. Victor responds as much as he wishes otherwise, parting his lips to let the Homunculus slide his tongue against his palate. Lust’s lips are full like Yuuri’s, a bit drier and far cooler though the actual texture of them is like the silk that hides Victor’s empty sockets. 

At some point Victor wrapped his hands around Lust’s waist while he sank onto his lap, straddling him. This is a terrible idea, he thinks, sleeping with the literal enemy. It’s a terrible idea and after their conversation, Chris will shoot Lust and then empty his next clip into Victor out of spite.

But, Victor thinks as Lust deepens the kiss, what a way to go.

His hands climb up to Lust’s back and clutch the leather-like fabric, and Lust’s hands drop from his face to his chest, running his them over Victor’s body. It’s a surreal experience---it feels like a homecoming, but the kind where one knows that the return is off, like things have changed enough Victor understands it won’t ever be the same.

He keeps going, keeps kissing because he knows it’s wrong, but he’s longed for it so strongly he can’t stop. He’s too weak, he knows this, and he realizes that as angry as he was, Chris is right. 

He was sure so little ago, that he could manage putting Lust into the ground if he had to, but in this moment...he can’t conceive of it.

Maybe that’s what Lust wants, he realizes. He’s being manipulated, a voice sounding like Chris tells him. The kiss breaks, and though Victor can’t see, his face angles up at Lust. “What is this?” he asks. “Is this you seeking refuge?”

There’s a change in Lust’s posture. Victor thinks he may have offended him. “A reasonable question,” Lust admits after thinking for several minutes. “No. This is---”

He waits so long Victor’s left eyebrow arches. “This is---?”

Lust’s hand caresses his face again.

Victor continues to wait. It stretches so long he worries someone will catch them.

When Lust speaks again, he sounds truly like Yuuri for the first time. 

“Redemption.”

*

_It’s been five months since the funeral when Victor finally recalls what Yuuri said before he passed, that he wrote him a thank-you note._

_He finds it in the top drawer of Yuuri’s nightstand, and it’s neatly addressed to him in Yuuri’s flawless looping penmanship. His hands shake and his eyes blur, but he opens the unsealed envelope and reads it anyways._

_Victor,_

_I wish I could say this to your face, that I didn’t have to hide behind a pen and paper, but I’ve never been good at talking or expressing myself when it really counts. So. Here I am, doing this the only way I can._

_First and foremost, please make sure you take care of yourself. I won’t be around to force you to eat or sleep---I remember how you were when we first met in your little apartment, so focused on passing the exam on the first try you’d go hours beyond appropriate meal times until I showed up and made you something. You’d burn the midnight oil too much in those days, which didn’t change until we started spending our nights together. Do not fail to take care of yourself, Victor. Please, if you give me nothing else, give me this one favor._

_I know you think Makkachin loves me best, but you’re all he has now. Make sure you make lots of time for him---lots of long walks when the weather’s nice, treats (but not too many! He’s spoiled enough), and his toys. He should be more comfortable on the bed now that I won’t be in it...don’t kick him out. Let him stretch out and be as close as he needs. He’ll grieve too, I’m sure._

_Don’t be afraid to let Chris or the others help you, either, Victor. They’re your team, but they’re also your friends. They care and will be your strength if you let them. Even the little Yuri, he cares in his own way, and he won’t want to see you in so much pain. Let them be there for you since I no longer can._

_You know, Victor...from the moment we met, I always somehow knew. I knew from one look in your eyes that my life was meant to entwine with yours...and for a while, I thought you might just see me as a friend since you didn’t have any. I was happy with that, but that first time we kissed...it was like my soul took flight, Victor. I’m so grateful that you felt the same as me, that you feel the same I should say, and nothing I’ve ever done since meeting you has been a cause for regret._

_I do wish I had more time, though I suspect if we lived to be two hundred I’ll still feel it wasn’t quite enough._

_Victor, I love you, and I have always loved you, and even when I’m gone, I’ll still love you wherever I end up, assuming there’s more than this life in store for me. I will always watch over you, I will always do what I can to protect you...but really, Victor, at the end of the day...you’re the one who’s always saved me. You always cared and comforted and spoiled and held me...I can’t ever repay you for loving me so greatly._

_I am so sorry for this, more sorry than you can ever know, but I needed you to understand that while our time together ended much too soon, I wouldn’t change a thing. Not one thing, nothing. I’ll never forget you, and I’ll always stay by your side._

_I love you, Victor. I’ll always love you---but don’t be afraid to live._

_Yuuri_

_Victor’s tears wreck parts of the letter, the ink smearing from the moisture dripping down his chin._

_In that moment, he makes his choice._

 

*

 

Victor’s unit plus Minako and Leroy eat breakfast in the makeshift mess hall. Yuri is curiously absent, but then he does prize his sleep above all else. Something about growth spurts and the weight of his arm, though Victor told him that sounds like a poor excuse.

Yuri swore at him and stormed off, Mila snickering in his wake.

Victor thinks back to hours ago when Lust kissed him, though nothing beyond that happened. He left soon after without saying much more, and Victor felt him go with his emotions in a deeper turmoil than he’d felt since Yuuri got sick.

He’s quiet while everyone chatters, until feet stomp up and he hears Yuri panting. “Come,” he snaps, and they all get up and follow him, discarding the food on their trays like they’re supposed to. 

Yuri leads them away from the base and up a rough terrain that Victor sometimes struggles with as he can’t see the way the hills incline or if there’s an object in his way. They reach some kind of plateau, and when Yuri stops, they all look at something.

It takes a second, but eventually they all react with varying degrees of shock or outrage.

“What?” Victor asks.

“It’s---” Minako says. “It’s an array. Someone carved a giant alchemic array around our base and the entire city of Lior.”

Victor feels horror creep upon him like a clingy hanger-on. “No.”

Yuri talks this time. “I decoded some more of Flamel’s research. Apparently...the secret to a Philosopher’s Stone is lives. Human lives. Thousands of them.” He clears his throat. “That’s why he never made one. That’s why no one really has attempted---”

“Until now,” Leroy says. “Damn.”

“We’re fodder for this insane plan,” Georgi says. “The whole military, everyone in Lior...it’s all some sick game for power.”

“We’ve all been played,” Mila says, the shock causing her voice to tremble.

Victor thinks. He thinks as hard as he’s able for a long time. 

“Whoever activates this array, is going to kill us all, and form the stone,” Minako says. “But who could be pulling the strings---”

“The Fuhrer?” Chris asks. “Since he got his title, we’ve been at war night and day almost. Could it be that it’s all been to have a body count high enough for the Philosopher’s Stone?”

Victor recalls Minako’s note. Two moles, Cialdini may be one. “Wait. What if he’s Pride?”

He hears everyone turn to him. 

“Seung-Gil was...Sloth I suppose,” he points out. “They always talked in secret with no one able to hear anything. I think some of the enlisted soldiers joked they were having some kind of affair, but---”

“Oh God,” Mila says. “How do we stop this? If it comes from the top...how could we possibly stop this?”

“We have to tell the Lior citizens,” Yuri says. “We have to evacuate them.”

“There’s so few of us,” Chris points out. “How can we get to them all in time?”

“We just have to do what we can with what we’ve got,” Victor answers, his voice becoming the determined pitch of a commanding officer. “We do the best with what we’ve got. We’ll split into groups, get as many people out as we can.”

His team and the other alchemists listen intently, some he thinks are nodding.

“Let’s go, grab the jeeps and head to it,” he says. “We can’t spare any more time. Every second we stay here is undoubtedly closer to the attempt to form the stone.”

They turn, and together with Victor they run back to camp. Minako, Leroy, Yuri, and himself use their clout as State Alchemists to commandeer vehicles, and they roll out, Victor with Chris in the driver’s seat. 

They manage to get a few city blocks emptied, even though the people hesitate to trust them. Chris helps diffuse their suspicions as he knows just the sight of the uniform can set people on edge.

Rightfully so, he thinks with bitterness. No wonder Yakov hates the military---he must have seen past the illusion for the truth. Victor feels like a fool devoting his life to this...it seems like almost every decision he’s made as an adult hasn’t been worth the price of admission.

Maybe not seems like---flat out, they aren’t.

Chris helps steer more people, and Victor nods with approval as he hears them scuttle away. They don’t know where they’re going, but they just need to get as far as possible. Even Xing is a better idea than here.

A familiar sound of grinding stone catches their attention. That deceiving laughter rings out, and Victor hears someone land a few feet from them. “What have we here,” Greed says with a snort. “The guy who pines for Lust and his gun-toting puppy. Think you can save people? Because you can’t, sorry not sorry.”

Before Victor can act Chris unloads an entire clip into Greed. He hears him snap a new one into pace, cocking his gun a second time in preparation for him to get back up. Victor claps and forms a machete. “Shoot him again,” he says.

He doesn’t hear Chris nod but he hears him open fire. Some land, some don’t this time, and he hears Greed punch Chris so hard in the solar plexus he drops. Victor yells, charging, and his blade strikes an object that feels like solid rock. 

Probably Greed’s arm, he thinks. He regroups, aiming for Greed’s midsection and feels the blade connect to flesh. “Rookie mistake, not making your whole body stone,” Victor comments.

Greed huffs and his stone leg connects with Victor’s chest. He feels two ribs snap, his breathing suddenly very painful, but he perseveres, striking Greed again in the chest with his machete. He hears a liquid drip onto the ground at their feet. 

“Move!” Chris cries, and Victor dodges as quick as he’s able with his injuries as Chris unloads another clip into Greed. Before Greed can really react, Victor hears him fall down on all fours with a death knell. 

Chris lights a cigarette and then splashes a liquid onto Greed before Victor hears the Zippo click open again. Greed catches fire, a loud ignition causing Victor to shield his face, and the Homunculus melts into the goo the others did. Victor can imagine the look on Chris’s face, and it’s not good or pretty.

“Two more,” Chris says as he stubs out his cig on the ground.

Victor holds his side and takes a shallow, slow breath. He thinks of Lust, his lips on his and his weight settled in his lap, his hands on his face and the feeling of his eyes focused on him alone.

“Yeah,” Victor says, a note of regret creeping into his voice. “Two more.”

“That was my lucky lighter,” Chris points out.

“I’ll buy you a better one,” Victor replies with a snort. “Pearl casing, even, if you like.”

“It’s a---” The sound of something squelching, stabbing cuts Chris off, and Victor starts in his direction. There’s a gurgling sound, dripping and gushing, and then something slides out of his body sounding like a carving knife. 

Victor hears Chris collapse, hears him spit up a lot of blood. “Chris?”

“Guess I should have---” Chris’s voice is quiet and flat. It’s not right at all. “Kept the lighter.”

Victor knows without feeling for a pulse he's gone, and Chris was obviously run through. His hands begin to shake. “Lust?”

“Not this time,” says Fuhrer Cialdini. He hears the movement of a blade---it’s the rapier Cialdini carries at his side instead of a sidearm. “Since you’re about to follow Lieutenant Giacometti, you can call me Pride.”

Victor grinds his teeth. “Ah yes. Of course.” 

The Fuhrer chuckles. “I had a feeling someone would figure it out at some point,” he says. “I just didn’t think it’d be you, especially not once you lost your sight. My money was on the child.”

Victor claps and pulls his hands wide apart to form a glaive with a poisoned blade. He’s going to have to do a lot of stabbing, which is less expedient than a hawk’s eye aim with a pistol. He’ll do it though; he has to. Too much rides on him, too much is at stake---not just Amestris but probably the whole world.

Plus, Chris was his best friend. He’s pretty pissed about that.

Before Victor can act, something heavy lands in between him and Pride. The Homunculus makes a noise like the one that came out of Lust when his hair was too close to his body. Pride tries to speak, and all that comes out is a weird shattered groan. 

“He’s stunned,” says Lust. His voice is a mixture of relief and hesitation. “You can take care of him as long as he’s immobile.”

Victor doesn’t move. “Lust…”

“Don’t,” Lust interrupts. “I didn’t do this for you.”

Victor frowns, then claps and sends a hailstorm of ice darts like shards of glass through Pride’s unmoving body. He repeats this five times until he hears Pride begin to melt like the others. There’s a sound like a sword being unsheathed, and then he hears Lust cut off his head to be sure.

Victor hears his claws retract. Lust stands two meters away, and Victor wishes he could see.

“If not for me,” Victor begins. “Why?”

The silence stretches between them, though Victor finds it comforting instead of awkward.

“I want my freedom,” Lust answers. “I was told I’d be turned human, instead of… _this_. That I’d get to have a life as long as I did what I was told.” He sighs. “It was enough until I saw you. Then only the impossible would satisfy me, and the deal couldn’t be altered.”

“Then if I stop this, we can---” A hand covers his mouth. He didn’t hear Lust move.

“No,” Lust says. “No. Not like this...not as some kind of half a person.” Lust makes a strangled choking sound, almost like he’s crying. “I have no soul. Depending on how many lives I have left, I won’t die for decades if not centuries or maybe ever. I have some memories and I feel...something---” He _is_ crying. “It’s not enough. I’m a shadow. You should have the light.”

His hand falls, and Victor reaches out, capturing it in his, tethering them. “Lust. _Yuuri_...”

“The problem with getting what you wish for,” Lust says. “Is that you get what you wanted. Past tense. It’s never enough, it’s never fully satisfying, because you’re always left demanding more.”

In his heart, Victor knows he’s right. He really does, but that doesn’t make it easy. In fact, it makes it harder.

Lust wraps his arms around his neck while on his tip-toes and gives him a quiet, lingering kiss. More than even the last rites at the grave site, Victor knows this is their final goodbye. Like a ghost when the kiss ends, Lust is gone, and Victor has no clue where or how he could try to find him.

A delicate metal object hits the ground near his right boot, and Victor bends to retrieve it. It’s his necklace, the locket where it should be...but the ring is gone. Victor knows without looking it didn’t roll away. 

His heart aches in a way that’s new in spite of everything he’s suffered. 

Belatedly he realizes he can’t drive, so he’s also stuck miles away from HQ with no way to return. It is decidedly not his best day, he thinks to himself. Before he can fumble into the Jeep for the radio, he hears wheels pull up. “Hey,” says Georgi. Then he sees the puddle and Chris. “Holy shit.”

“Yup,” Victor says. 

Someone else gets out of the new car, and he hears them pick up Chris’s body together. “Ugh, heavier than he looked,” Yuri complains.

“Have some respect,” Victor snaps.

Uncharacteristically, Yuri backs down. “Are we out of Homunculi?” he asks.

No. “Yes,” Victor answers. It’s not technically a lie.

“Okay, well,” Georgi answers. “At least we didn’t lose Chris in vain.”

Too many have been lost for it to not be at least a little in vain, Victor thinks. He climbs into the back of their Jeep as Georgi puts a tarp over Chris. Victor feels mostly numb in the wake of losing two people at once, and he knows he’ll flip out later about Chris, but for right now...his heart is frozen solid like the ice he creates.

“We wrecked the array,” Yuri says in a quiet voice as Georgi drives them back. “In a permanent way, so it can’t be repaired.”

“Well, the Fuhrer was Pride so that puts a wrench in a fight breaking out anyhow,” Victor remarks.

“Jesus,” Georgi adds. “All the way to the top.”

“They’re all gone? All seven?” Yuri asks. An accusation hangs in his words.

Victor fingers the necklace that no longer bears a wedding band. His head is bowed down towards his chest, and he sighs. 

“All gone.”

*

_”What do you like best about me?” Yuuri asks one night when it’s late. Only the dim light of their bedside lamp illuminates the room._

_Victor continues to read his book---for once, he’s not studying. It’s actually a novel, something for pleasure. Mila recommended it to him, a romance about lovers destined to meet over and over again throughout their many lifetimes before they finally get it right. It would normally be a bit mushy for him, but the prose is excellent, and he hopes the two lovers can find a way._

_“Victooorrrrrr,” Yuuri grumbles. He steals the book, dog-earing the page and putting it on the floor next to his side of the bed._

_It takes Victor an embarrassing amount of time to process Yuuri’s actions. “Yuuri!”_

_“I asked you something,” Yuuri says, his voice shifting back to sweetness. “What do you like best about me?”_

_Victor presses an index finger to his lips. “Only one thing?” He pulls Yuuri close, nuzzling his ear. “How can I choose? Everything about you is perfect.”_

_Yuuri grumbles. “Flatterer.”_

_“It’s true,” Victor says as he kisses his temple. “There’s nothing about you I don’t love, even when you’re annoying.”_

_“Hey,” Yuuri complains with a light shove. “You don’t have a leg to stand on there, you know.”_

_“I think that’s why we work,” Victor says. “We meet each other where we are. We give and take, we push and pull...we make room for each other, and we forgive each other when we do wrong.”_

_Yuuri gets an expression that’s both charmed and satisfied. “We do,” he says softly before kissing Victor’s smiling lips._

_“We do,” Victor agrees as he turns off the light, and they head to sleep._

*

When all has been said and done, they’ve averted a crisis and submitted reports. The military board doesn’t know what to make of most of what they read, but Chris gets promoted to Colonel posthumously, Yuri gets promoted to Brigadier General, and Victor somehow becomes the new Fuhrer.

At least with him in the role orders that don’t make sense will no longer be given, he muses. 

Yuri accepts the promotion, but opts for early retirement not long after. With his grandpa truly gone, and with the cost of a Philosopher’s Stone too great, he has no need for the position he feels. They grant him a good pension in spite of his age, and he writes Victor every so often from his quiet country town about doing odd alchemy jobs and investigations with Otabek to take a break from humdrum life for adventure.

Victor enjoys hearing from him, and he keeps the letters in a box with the one Yuuri wrote.

Minako leaves the military again, though this time she moves near the Katsukis. Victor runs into her some nights at their inn, and he’s perpetually amazed at how well she can hold her drink. 

Leroy, who prefers to be called JJ, takes Victor’s old job in Central with Mila and Georgi. At Victor’s ceremony, he’s introduced to his wife, Isabella. They think they world of each other, and as abrasive as JJ can be, Victor’s glad to have him available and at his call.

Victor does some digging now that he has the clearance, and though he tries for months, Cialdini scrubbed any evidence that would point to the human identities of the Homunculi. He realizes in retrospect there may not be anything that knowing would help, as they could be hundreds of years old. Alchemy is a very old science, after all, and there may not be a point to dredging anything up. Who could he tell that would know them?

Makkachin is still with him, and though the Fuhrer is entitled to a mansion, he stays in his home. It’s too much house for one man and a dog, and he’s been here so long, he isn’t sure how to leave.

Once a month, he leaves early at lunchtime, and his driver takes him first to the military cemetery. He always leaves a pack of Chris’s favorite cigarettes on the marker, and he thanks him for many things, most of all for telling him the hard things he needed to hear.

The driver then takes him to the civilian cemetery on the other side of the city close to his home, and Victor lays a blue rose on one marker in particular, finding it by the muscle memory from when he had his sight and could memorize the path.

He usually doesn’t talk to Yuuri---it feels a bit unnecessary since he’s not really here, at least not in any way that matters, but he sits and waits until the air gets a bit cooler before driving home to Makkachin and dinner at the Yu-Topia Inn.

Something’s different this time...the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. He can sense someone else a few feet away, but he doesn’t know who it is...probably someone looking for a grave, he supposes, and they’re lost.

He turns his attention back to the marker, even though he can’t read it. _Katsuki Yuuri_ , he feels as he runs a hand over the engraved words. _Beloved son, brother, and devoted husband. Even if there had been a thousand years, it would have never been enough time._

Victor strokes the letters a second time, and his hand slips off the marker. He feels something lying on it---it’s not anything he set down. It’s not anything the Katsukis would have either, and they only come on Yuuri’s birthday and death anniversary.

It’s a letter in braille. Victor opens it and traces the writing.

 _I still do,_ is what it says. _Thank you, Victor._

Victor smiles, though it is a bit sad. He pockets the note, walks back to his car, and is driven home.


	2. Lust

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, what looks like an ending is the start of something new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  
> 
>  
> 
> Listen to the [playlist on Spotify.](https://open.spotify.com/user/12168581471/playlist/7yb4dBCEByVsTbUsAmHvwP?si=seYP_v1XTGSzgl0ExRncUQ)

Lior is nothing but heatwaves and sand as far as the eye can see. Travel on foot, even with his durability and lack of need for water, is pointless.

He sneaks into an abandoned house with charred stucco, finding the scarves used to keep sun off the humans’ necks and wrapping himself up to disguise everything but his eyes and hands. If anyone looks too closely, they’ll know. They’ll tell instantly---he’d rather they not.

Their interactions will lack civility.

He finds money in an elegant, lacquered box with a small gold lock he easily picks. It’s not a lot, but enough to allow him safe passage. He lies low, waiting until dark and then sneaks through the city. It’s mostly a ghost town thanks to Victor and his men, but he still hears voices and movement echo through the alleys.

Somehow the trains are still running. He doesn’t look at the destination, just buys a pass with for a private sleeper car so he doesn’t have to concern himself with a fellow passenger being too curious.

He enters and finds his car before sitting, kicking the dust off one boot at a time. The scarf unwinds from his face, and he folds it to use as a second pillow.

Not that he sleeps much. Not that he has to.

He turns his head one way, hearing the joints make a loud crack, followed by the other. After removing the boots, he sits cross-legged on the bed and stares at the object in his palm---a gold band that’s seen better days but fits his right ring finger and shines like possibility and hope.

Hope is for fools, he tells himself as he holds the ring up to his eye.

The whistle sounds as the train begins to move. He checks his ticket then---the destination is the capital of Xing, which means the route will be treacherous. It explains why he was able to secure passage so easily at the last moment.

One finger flickers into a meter long claw, sharp as a freshly forged iron blade. Let bandits or Xing insurgents try. He could stand a means to work out the lingering frustration.

Or...his guilt.

_Guilt._

The word tastes slightly off, like milk that’s barely out of date. Retracting the claw, he grimaces. Guilt sits like cyanide within him, like bitter almonds pressed in water and added to a lipstick or a goblet of wine, disguised in either passion or fermentation, purposed for felling an enemy.

It’s an old trick, but a good one. He’s employed it when he needed to be more discreet than stabbing would allow.

The train picks up speed, the chugging of the steam engine and the faint smell of coal permeating the car.

Lust looks at the gold band again with unwavering eyes. There’s a feeling in his chest, a longing that flits like the wings of a dove through a summer sky. His lips burn from the phantom of Victor’s pressing against his---

Hope is for fools.

*

_He doesn’t understand what causes his epiphany, but one day while Victor is on base and Yuuri rests on their couch under crocheted afghans and Makkachin, he knows. A week maybe, two tops…the sand in his hourglass is almost out._

_His hands tremble. Makkachin notices, whimpering as he gives Yuuri a gentle lick on his cheek._

_As quick as the despair comes, it fades. He regains his composure. There’s a notebook and a pen on the side table---he reaches for them as if by rote, uncapping the pen to test it on a scrap piece of paper. It’s got plenty of ink. He chooses an unblemished sheet and lets the words come naturally, for once not overthinking and allowing himself to speak from the heart._

_Victor, he writes,_ _I wish I could say this to your face, that I didn’t have to hide behind a pen and paper—_

*

Above all else, Lust wishes his life could be simple.

As a result of the choices made by the Ice Storm Alchemist and a Devil’s bargain Lust was granted, he realizes now it is not to be. It is silly to dream of that which cannot happen, yet when he is idle, it is all Lust does, a longing for a green backyard with a garden and a clean, cozy brick house warm and full of love. Good neighbors who mostly mind themselves, a kind set of parents, a teasing older sister, a happy, cuddly dog...

If wishes were horses, he’d have a whole ranch. What he has instead is a rolling boil of rage in his stomach that dissolves into bitter tears if he dwells too long.

There’s a layover, long enough he can go for a walk, stretch, see a piece of the world he wouldn’t normally. He covers himself again, hiding his face except his eyes as he chooses to get some air. It’s hot, sweltering really, and Lust scolds himself for the misfortune of not ending up on a train to the North instead.

Lust wanders, not too far from the depot. It’s mostly deserted, few people capable of surviving in these conditions. Lior is dreadful but here is worse, so much so that aside from the railway workers no one lives here. There are plants and dust---some species of cacti, but a few bushes filled with desert roses of red and yellow. Lust eyes an open bloom, a red one, for longer than is necessary.

He thinks he loved them once upon a time, but now the smell clogs his heightened olfactory senses and sickens him.

Some children from the busier cars play together nearby. Lust watches them from close by after he returns to the shadows. A little girl with auburn ringlets is in charge, bossing her playmates around as if she is a queen who imparts royal decrees.

Something picks at Lust’s brain: the familiar tugging of a memory from Katsuki Yuuri’s existence. The way she talks, perhaps, or the energy shining out from within like a homing beacon.

Not one girl, Lust realizes---three, all identical except for the colors of their clothing and the hairstyles they wear. Purple, pink, and baby blue, excited yelling and cheering, inappropriate yet innocent questions...their mother—he remembers she is pretty with warm eyes and a glowing smile. Their father is a wall of a man with a boisterous laugh and a kind heart.

The memory isn’t clear or focused---it’s more like a jumble of hundreds. Summer days, an autumn wedding...it’s a mess, and he closes his eyes, pressing his fingers into his temple to stave off a wave of pain. The return of Katsuki’s memories always cause a headache, at least until they settle into a semblance of clarity.

He wonders sometimes, that should he put a claw through his own head would it help.

He’d just drop for a minute, recover, and go on as if he was simply hit by a breeze. He’d have to do it countless times to actually die.

Well...there is the stone in his chest. Lust absently runs a hand over the skin and bones encasing his body, fingers tracing the mark on his collarbone first, then where the red stone sits.

Silver hair and a military uniform flicker in his mind’s eye, the cadence of the words _In another life, you loved me_ reverberating in his ears like a distant crack of a rifle.

Lust not only doesn’t believe in ghosts, he hates the concept. He loathes them, the specter of Katsuki Yuuri most of all. Chasing them is fruitless, especially as his is uninvited and unwelcome.

There’s an announcement -- the train departs in a few minutes. He’s traveled for two -- maybe three — days east of Lior. Lust saunters back to the depot, scarf held tight to conceal his face. He doesn’t board to Xing, opting to commandeer an empty car in a different direction. The ring is a heavy burden in his pocket. He pulls it out, and it glimmers from the dim gas lamps.

_“All aboard! Full service to Amestris---Central City Station! All aboard!”_

Lust wishes for simplicity, clean and uncomplicated living. His change in destination will not facilitate this, and that is not lost on him.

*

**_Pain._ **

_That is the only word that comes to mind and it scarcely does his situation any justice. Every cell, every nerve, every mitochondria is on fire, his body a five-alarm explosion of suffering so strong he can’t speak, sit, or stand. He lies in a puddle of something red and thick in the fetal position, too strung out to notice his location or to even cry. He can’t scream, he aches so severely, and he can’t think to beg for even a mercy killing._

_He thinks that maybe there are approaching footsteps. He can’t tell---there’s too much pain to focus._

_“What have we here?” a smooth voice says. The person crouches, tentatively reaching out. A hand runs over him, igniting his nerves further into pain so strong he is rendered wholly blind. “Hm. Sloth?”_

_“Yes sir,” another voice says. His footsteps are lighter, sounding like the slow pound of water against the asphalt._

_“Do you have the red stones?” the first voice asks. “I think we found our last scion.”_

_“Yes, sir,” says Sloth. Something that rattles in soft cloth passes between them. The close person unties it, holding a glowing red object like an oversized jelly bean in his open palm. “Here, precious. Eat up.”_

_Everything hurts so much, so much in a way that shouldn’t be possible, but he takes the stone and puts it in his mouth. His teeth chomp down onto it, and a liquid bursts into his mouth. The pain immediately lessens, his body feeling more alive than it has in — he can’t recall, but he thinks maybe it’s been a while. The juice tastes salty, not unlike the coppery tang of blood, and he_ _hungers_ _._

_“More,” he manages after swallowing. He licks his lips, prepared to beg if he must._

_He is given the whole bag this time, and he grabs them by the handful, shoveling them into his mouth and chewing as the liquid stains his lips, chin, and teeth. They’re delicious, and he’s ravenous, the stones sating his desperation, curing his pain, and giving him, for lack of a better word, power. Tears run down his face as he consumes the whole bag a few dozen at a time, though he isn’t quite sure why._

_Probably it’s from relief. He feels so much better. He doesn’t hurt at all anymore. He feels renewed, strong, maybe invincible —_

_“What are these?” he manages when he’s almost full and the bag is just shy of empty._

_He can see more clearly now---the first person is a man of about forty-five with long, shining hair pulled back in a ponytail. He wears a leather jacket over a white shirt and a pair of trousers with boots. His smile gleams white and cold._

_The second is a man with pale skin, fluffy black hair, and thick brows. His face is diffident, his eyes a shade between red and black, and he wears an outfit of a weird obsidian material that looks slick and wet. He has fingerless gloves, pants that hug his slim frame, and a shirt with a v-neck and long sleeves almost resembling a crow’s wings. He inclines his head in a slight nod._

_“Well, see,” the first man says. “Those are people you just ate. More’s the pity, but the red stones are made of human lives.”_

_He should be horrified, this should make him run away and scream. “Oh,” he says instead. It doesn’t matter; after all, dead is dead. This way their lives are not in vain._

_A change happens then, beyond the pain fading. His vision was blurred, as if perhaps he needed glasses a moment ago — now it’s not only clear but as strong as a hawk’s, seeing with depth and distance like a bird of prey. His hearing is razor-sharp, his bones feel unbreakable, his muscles more firm, parts of his body that were soft are now taut and rock-solid…_

_His emotions are gone. A slow fade until his heart is encased in chains and a padlock of ice._

_Ice seems...important. As fast as that occurs to him, it dissipates._

_He thinks he might have been nude before, but now he wears a suit like Sloth---it’s black, leather-like with a red sheen and some mesh panels strategically over his one arm and chest, preceded by a plunging neck that exposes his collarbones. His hands are covered in a strange type of fingerless glove, and his entire finger tips are red, not just his nails. He flexes his hands, and they extend into sharp metal-like claws about six inches in length._

_He gives the long-haired man a curious look. “Lust,” he says with fondness. “My name is Pride. Come with us. It’s time to meet the rest of your family.”_

_Pride extends a hand._

_Lust takes it without hesitation._

*

Sand and heat fade into grass and cooler air with clouds in the sky. The train arrives at Central Station, and Lust, wrapped in his disguise, steps out of it.

A family of five walk past in the opposite direction---a tall man with tan skin ushering his three daughters who wear pink, purple, and blue. His wife, a beautiful woman with bright brown eyes laughs at something one of the girls says.

Lust can’t help but pause.

They sat in the second row at hi---Katsuki’s wedding to Victor Nikiforov. The parents are Katsuki’s childhood friends...Nishigori. They’re the Nishigori family.

He averts his eyes, walking faster to avoid recognition. It’s mostly to not answer any questions or for his crimes.

Though he’d be answering for Victor’s crime, wouldn’t he?

Lust hires a cab and ends up at the front gate of the Central Base. He steals through the building like liquid shadows, entering the quartermaster’s facility when he goes out to lunch. Lust puts on a uniform with the white gloves typically reserved for formal dress. He pulls the cover low over his eyes as well, so no one sees their scarlet color. He pins some bars and stars to the proper spots to make it look like he’s earned rank.

There are warehouses on the base. He can stay in one until he regroups since they’re rarely entered. Victor told him with laughter more than once stories of the enlisted men running in terror from one “haunted” one in particular: Warehouse 13.

Lust breaks in through a window. It’s dusty and mostly bare. There’s a pile of straw that can work as a bed until he gets a safer option if he puts a tarp over it. He lifts the cover and looks at the roof—if it rains lightly, not a violent storm, he’ll stay dry.

Warm bed, gas heater, candles and soft hands gliding across his skin…

Lust grinds his jaw and gets settled.

*

_There are seven of them in total. Pride ages like a human somehow, the rest of them frozen in time like portraiture._

_Wrath looks entirely too young, his accent marking him as from Xing. He has brown hair and freckles across his nose and cheeks. He wears a black top with accents in a slight shimmer of rose, and when he smiles, there is nothing but malice. His partner is tan and taller with long brown hair tied back in a black vest and pants with short black fingerless gloves. Envy is a mimic who sings to his prey as he shifts into a mirage of their loved ones before he snaps their necks._

_Gluttony looks the oldest of all of them, though he is only “older” than Lust. He’s a bearded man who’d be a kindly grandfather if not for his acid saliva and his sharp teeth with the toughness of steel. He doesn’t speak often, but when he does, they immediately listen._

_Sloth is perpetually disaffected, in gray and black with a fluidity to his movements that undermines his pretend-humanity. Lust can hear his steps squelch like he got caught in the rain, and he never, ever smiles. Then there’s Greed, who immediately sidles up to Lust with ferocious, sharp teeth and yellow eyes. “Hi,” he says, fingering the neckline of his black leather and gold shirt. “You’re new.”_

_Lust raises an eyebrow. “I am.”_

_Greed’s grin widens like a feral dog spotting a wounded rabbit, going in for the kill. “We’re a fun bunch,” Greed continues. He’s a deeper tan than Envy with his jet-black hair slicked into a side part. He bites on a long, pointed scarlet thumbnail. “Nothing but good times here.”_

_Pride clears his throat. The Fuhrer uniform looks out of place among the rest of them who are clad in the color of the night. “We have new instructions,” he begins. “It’s right up Greed’s alley, but I’ll send Lust with you so he can learn the ropes.”_

_Greed’s laugh is a mixture of delight and violence. In the blink of an eye he turns to stone, his canine teeth elongating to where they jut over his lips, his eyes a solid yellow like a cat. “Fuhrer Ciao Ciao,” he says with a bow. “It will be my genuine pleasure.”_

_Lust holds his hands palms up as his fingertips elongate into sharp talons that can cut through metal._

_Two days later, he’s with Greed in the East infiltrating a General’s home. He’s bald with red eyeglasses, and when he empties a clip into Greed’s stone chest, Lust makes short work of him with a claw slashing so deep into his throat his head is almost severed. Blood sprays Lust’s face, the same shade as his eyes while Greed grabs the map and research they came for._

_“Alright, Lust?” Greed asks as he shifts back to flesh and bone._

_Lust licks blood off his upper lip and the corner of his mouth. He remembers the red stones from his first meal. The blood is almost as tasty, he decides._

_“Never better,” Lust purrs with a smirk as his claw retracts._

*

Six Homunculi are dead and gone. Lust never did learn the identity of the mysterious person who called the shots. Pride was a pet project of theirs that took years to perfect—make a Homunculus age like a human, infiltrate the military to the highest office, let the dominos fall one by one upon creation of the Philosopher’s Stone.

Lust was promised humanity if he followed orders. A new chance at an actual life to live, a soul and a guaranteed ending.

He pulls the cover down low as he rounds a corner near the Fuhrer’s office, skulking as though he’s on patrol as he has done for the last half a year. He avoids eye contact and doesn’t speak when addressed as a younger and newly minted State Alchemist steps out with a glimmer of pride in his eyes. He’s built like a pre-teen boy with blonde and red hair, brown eyes, and a grin that could power the city. He grips the silver pocket watch so tight it may shatter, and in that moment, his whole life is ahead of him.

The door closes and he screams in joy. “Minami Kenjirou, the Jazz Boogie Alchemist,” he breathes like he can’t believe it. “This is too good!”

He has the presence of mind to put the watch away before clapping his hands loudly. He runs down the hall, his black and blue jacket trailing behind, and Lust wonders if he became human again could anything make him so happy?

Lust looks at the polished oak door. _Fuhrer Victor Nikiforov_ , the plaque declares in bronze. He caresses the letters, tracing them eight times. He could knock and seek an audience. He could see his face again, maybe hold him in his hands like Lior.

Moving back, he is no longer within reach. He stares for a moment longer then turns and walks away at parade rest, leading with his right foot first like a good soldier would.

*

_Viktor’s best feature, Yuuri decides the morning after they are wed, is a tie between his hair and his eyes. He wakes first, watching the dawn sun cast rays of saffron and peach across Victor’s bare back. The waist-length silver strands are loose instead of up, which is how Victor usually prefers to sleep, and they fan around him on his half of their bed. Something about knots and too much necessary brushing, he complains when he doesn’t take more care._

_Yuuri thought as a child that perhaps one day he’d find love, but he never imagined this. Nothing gentle and sweeping all at once, a love so strong he could drown in it. He grabs a pen from the nightstand — it contains red ink, as it’s one of Victor’s for creating arrays. As lightly as he can, Yuuri brushes the silver and white strands to reveal his canvas of pale skin dotted with small constellations of freckles on his shoulder blades._

_Then, he gets down to work._

_His handwriting has always been precise and clean, inherited from his mother like his smile and his tendency to put on a few pounds when he indulges too often in rich food._

_He draws and calligraphs a message onto Victor’s back that not even he will see. There are roses surrounding his words in the center, similar to their wedding invitations. As he finishes the final letter, Victor sighs and opens one eye at him. “Yuuuurrriiiii,” he says, voice low and full of sleep._

_“Shhh,” Yuuri answers. He completes the letter with a flourish. “Okay.”_

_Victor rolls onto his side, reaching one hand up to stroke Yuuri’s cheek. It’s his ring hand, the one that bears a gold band symbolizing the future that lies ahead unbroken. Yuuri bends down to kiss him, the soft sounds of birdsong the sole background noise as Victor holds him tighter, sliding their fingers together as he parts his lips in invitation._

_Yuuri traces the words inscribed over his husband’s spine in crimson: love, like a bird, is free._

_*_

Lust hides in plain sight.

It’s easy since Victor’s blind and he’s not surrounded by those people anymore. He cuts it close walking by the redhead one afternoon when she heads to the range, but he ducks his head and does an about-face the way he came.

He walks past the closed oak doors housing the Fuhrer, slowing as always before he resumes his double-time pace. It’s a nice day, oddly warm given the season, and Lust sits on a bench alone to avoid having to skulk for once.

Katsuki always liked sunny weather broken up with clouds and snow. Lust doesn’t get bothered by temperature. Weather can’t be controlled, so Lust pays it no mind.

Someone sits next to him, tiny and birdlike. They have a brown bag lunch, the paper wrinkling as they unwrap a sandwich. Lust hides his eyes and tries to look away as they hum with pleasure after their first bite. “Mama told me I was too young,” he chitters.

Lust gives him a glance from his periphery. It’s that kid with the dye job, the new Alchemist.

“I told her the Glass Tiger Alchemist was younger, though I think he quit or something,” he continues. “But right now it’s just research! And Fuhrer Nikiforov is actively avoiding war. Things are fine, you know?”

The kid is guileless with one incisor so sharp and long it hangs exposed over his bottom lip. His eyes burn through Lust with hope. The red streak in his hair reminds Lust of a bouquet Victor gave Katsuki once…well, more than once. The anniversary flowers, the arrangement of white and red roses and camellias he insisted on every single year.

It takes more willpower than Lust will admit to not extending a claw and scalping the kid.

With stunningly little self-preservation, the kid hands Lust half the sandwich. “You forgot your lunch didn’t you?” he offers. “Here. Mom always packs me too much; there are cakes too, these green ones with strawberry in the middle—”

Lust cannot refuse the sandwich even though he doesn’t actually need to eat food. Still, he takes it without exposing the top half of his face. “Thanks,” he says with about fifty percent certainty.

The kid is a loud eater like a dog, and Lust nibbles at the food. Yakisoba noodles, pork loin, mayonnaise, cabbage, carrots, onion, pinch of aonori. Lust devours it, the flavor combination oddly comforting and deeply familiar.

The cakes have a similar result, like Lust used to eat them regularly. Delicious though not exact to Okasaan’s recipe, he thinks. She always uses strawberry juice in the whipped cream for that ext—

She’s not Lust’s mother. She was _his_ mother, and now she’s a woman who runs an inn who had the misfortunate to bury her only son.

The cake tastes like dirt and sits like lead in his stomach. He brushes the crumbs off his gloves, leaving it partially eaten as he gets up. Strategic retreats aren’t cowardice or running away.

“Do you not like it?” The kid asks. He sounds oddly hurt, as though they’re somehow longtime friends and Lust insulted his character.

Lust doesn’t even turn his head before responding with, “I don’t like sweet things.”

*

_A simple smash and grab._

_Allegedly._

_It doesn’t turn out that way, but that’s what they were told by Fuhrer Pride._

_The way it begins is so boring Lust contemplates running Greed through solely so he’ll let the complaints rest for the three minutes it takes for his life to regenerate. The records are locked and sealed, classified beyond classified, and Pride can’t requisition them without arousing the Records Keeper’s suspicion._

_Lust got the key from the guy, a pretty brown-haired Major named Lambiel, with a little alcohol and a fair amount of flirtation. Still, he got the job done, and now they’re digging for Ciao Ciao’s dirt._

_There was an event in Ishval, and one before that in the North. Their job is to grab the reports, all copies, all forms in pink, yellow, and white triplicate smudged from carbon, pass them to Sloth, who will give them to the Maker. If the wrong person looks too hard, it’ll all be over, and Lust won’t get his gift._

_Lust doesn’t hear the gun cock because Greed’s too mouthy. “This is boring. Why can’t we burn it down and call it a day? Why these particular files? Pride never lets us have a good time, you know. I’m over it.”_

_“Pride has his reasons, Greed,” Lust counters as he stacks up the Isvhal manifests. “There’s an order and a sequence, you know this. We’ll get what we want as long as we play follow the leader.”_

_“Yuuri?” calls a voice, a voice he instantly recognizes with no idea of how. The voice belongs to a man, and whatever broke his heart still burns in him given the pain leaking out of that one word._

_Instinctively, Lust extends the claws on his right hand. “Who? Who’s Yuuri?” He turns to the voice and there are a pair officers. One is tall with blond curls, green eyes, and the business end of a Walther PPK aimed at Lust’s face._

_The other is…captivating. He is perhaps the saddest person Lust has ever seen, but in no way does it diminish the softness of his silver-blond hair, the cut of his figure in the blue and gray, the perfect angle of his nose. His eyes are covered by a wide strip of silk. Is he blind?_ _He wasn’t blind before, Lust thinks, and his hair was waist-length, not close cropped with long fringe over half his forehead. He’s never seen him before, but the memory of long strands across a pillowcase, of a poem written across freckled-shoulders bedecked with flowers slams into Lust like a tank._

_Greed morphs into stone, with his grin more feral than before. “Oh look,” he proclaims with glee. “Toys! I haven’t gotten to work out in a while, Lust. Can we? Please?”_

_The one with the gun arms himself. “You’re not Katsuki Yuuri, I was one of his pallbearers two years ago. Who or what are you?”_

Katsuki Yuuri _. Lust narrows his eyes. His ring finger suddenly feels bare, his heart feels equally hollow._

_Greed laughs the one Lust now thinks of as the Incoming Mayhem laugh. Gunshots ricochet off Greed and hit Lust in one biceps. It’s not close to fatal, more of an annoyance than anything, and before Lust can move, Greed makes short work of the shooter, lifting him one handed in spite of over half of foot difference between them and hurling him into a wall so hard he’s down for the count._

_The blind man turns to the noise but doesn’t move, and now focuses back on Lust and Greed. “Yuuri,” he pleads. It’s, at best, pathetic, like a child wanting to eat two helpings of dessert. “Yuuri, it’s me. It’s Victor.” He lifts his hand and shows off a band of gold that’s seen better days. “Yuuri, have you come back to me? Did it work after all? Was it worth the price I paid?”_

_Lust stares through him, into…something. A past that can’t be his._

_“Wow Lust,” Greed mocks. “Was it worth it? Did you come back to him?”_

_"Stop it,” Lust says. The last time Greed mocked him, he ended up being drowned in a bathtub. Clearly he forgot the moral of that lesson. “I don’t even know his name.”_

_This Victor chokes back some kind of sob and as his knees give out, Lust moves, extending his claws to pin him upright into the wall. Lust is close enough to kiss if he wants, and….something in him really, really does. He’s too close, too long, and something causes a war within him. Logically, they should kill the witnesses. Logically, he’s in prime position to slit his throat, which his personal favorite means to end a life._

_Lust instead is dazzled by his beauty and some kind of…affection. If he didn’t lack a soul, he’d think maybe it could turn into love._

_Gunshots boom in the silence, three in succession hitting Lust in his chest opposite the heart, where his appendix would be, and a gut shot. Lust bleeds like always, but the wounds repair themselves. He’s down a life again. Out of reflex, his claws retract, and then he’s pelted by blades of ice that are full of a burning poison._

_Lust openly scoffs, and this Victor claps his hands. As he pulls them as wide as his arm-span permits, there’s a spear made of the same poisoned ice as the other blades. It’s Alchemy, but he didn’t use a circle._

_Why didn’t he need a circle?_

_Greed whistles like he’s calling an errant dog. “This is too hot. You were right the first time---we should have just smashed and grabbed. Pride’s going to be pissed.”_

_Lust extends his claws, and they clash against the spear with a loud metallic clang. Victor is taller than Lust, and he has decent upper body strength as he manages to drop him onto his back. Lust returns the favor with a kick to his solar plexus. Victor drops his weapon, stumbling back to catch his breath. Lust then spins, leaving a shallow cut across Victor’s right cheek as he moves. “Hm,” he observes. “It’s a shame. You have a pretty face---in another life, I might’ve liked you.”_

_In the process of getting back up, Victor freezes. “In another life, you loved me.”_

_Greed breaks a window and screams with macabre joy as he dives down to the gaslit pavement. Lust follows one step at a time. He pauses at the windowsill and stares at Victor, who somehow looks like he’s lost the entire world from one fight._

_Lust commits his face to memory, then somersaults out the window like a trained gymnast._

*

Against his fondest wishes, Lust gains an admirer.

The boy finds him every day at lunch, insisting they share, and chatters about nothing until Lust has a headache . His name is Minami Kenjirou, his family are mostly automail mechanics and doctors, he has older brothers and a high-contrast albino ball python named Lohengrin, that he incorporates music into his alchemic formulas as part of why he passed the exam is his breakthrough that the math is similar, that he uses alchemy to color his hair since normal dyes wouldn’t take, and that he apparently thinks Lust is the greatest man to ever live.

Lust doesn’t talk much, choosing to focus on eating the crustless tokatsu and yakisoba sandwiches Minami’s mom makes for him. He wants to pack his own food, he says every single day, but his mom insists on this final act of babying since he’s the youngest.

Sometimes he shares egg salad on toast, and the indignity of that plus Minami’s chatter is almost enough to make Lust stab him. Not a fatal wound of course, but just enough for stitches and a short hospital stay. Though today he also offers a nice portion of kinpira renkon, and Lust reconsiders the maiming after a few bites of savory-sweet lotus.

He doesn’t need to eat, but it’s weirdly soothing. He does his best to hide how sharp his teeth are, how crimson the color of his irises reflects in vivid light.

After three weeks of this, Lust grudgingly decides the nugget is alright, smiling more often than he’d ever admit if observed by a witness. He doesn’t talk much, but the kid chitters until one moment he swallows wrong, chokes, and grips Lust’s neck, pulling his line of sight to —

“Victor,” Lust breathes.

The Fuhrer and his entourage walk the grounds. His secretary rambles about something, an obstacle course for alchemist re-certifications Lust hears when the wind is on his side. Lust caresses the gold band he always keeps on him, though never in the fashion it should be. It fits like it never left his hand, but he can’t bring himself to put it on.

Victor can’t see, so it’s not like he needs to hide, but he does anyways by pulling the jacket up over his face and the cover down over his eyes. He’s basically the tip of his nose and nothing else.

The entourage disappears, but Lust swears he feels Victor turn his way anyhow.

*

 _The day before, the prognosis angered Yuuri so badly he destroyed their living room and terrified poor Makkachin. Victor held him as he sobbed, put him to bed, and held him as he sobbed a second time, a third, until he was dehydrated and had laryngitis._ _Victor took the following day off, and Yuuri sleeps too late as has become his new normal. Makkachin slowly perks up at his movement, and he huffs a happy sound as he comes close to snuggle, draped half on Yuuri with a ginger posture that disproves any belief that dogs are not capable of love._

_Victor enters the room carrying a tray of barley tea and pancakes. Yuuri can hardly stomach food, but Victor makes him try anyways. “They have berries from your bushes,” Victor says._

_The cheer in his voice is as fake as it is brittle._

_Yuuri hates being coddled, even with his rapid deterioration. Today he quietly watches Victor cut the pancakes, the thick stack of the four of them painting the china various shades of purple from the juice, and Victor dips a forkful in warm syrup for Yuuri to eat._

_He manages a third of them. It’s better than he’s done in a long time. Yuuri makes a note to go to the inn as soon as he can to try to have his mother’s katsudon one last time before he can’t manage even a solitary bite._

_Victor talks about something normal, because that’s what Victor does now. He tries so hard, he loves Yuuri so much, he refuses so badly to give in. Yuuri longs to tell him how strong and beautiful he is._

_”Will you still love me?” comes out instead while Victor holds his hands. Makkachin stays curled up in the middle to comfort them both. “The rest of my life,” Yuuri clarifies. “Will you still love me for the rest of my life?”_

_He hears the way Victor stops breathing, before he recovers. The smile is genuine. So are the tears filling his too-blue eyes._

_“No, Yuuri,” Victor says. He manages to make eye contact, and for a moment, they’re just a pair of people who are young, in love, and happy. “I’ll love you for the rest of mine.”_

_*_

There is something inherently odd about being tethered to a place to which Lust has no ties.

When the shift changes for the weekend, Lust leaves the base for downtown.

On a busy street near the city center is a bustling inn. _Yu-Topia Katsuki_ the wooden sign proclaims with bold blue and gold lettering. The smell of pork cutlets fried in panko and the sound of revelry over a successful sports match by a Central City team almost bowl Lust over.

It’s idiotic, but he goes inside with his cover low and his gloves on. He chooses a dark, corner table that’s mostly empty aside from a woman who must have begun drinking at noon and hasn’t even slowed down since. She shoots sake like she’s paid to with a classically pretty face and long, dark brown hair. “Hiroko,” she calls. “Another round!”

Lust tries to make himself seem impossibly small. Hiroko is Katsuki’s mother. The man crowing with his fellow fans about the sports victory is the father, Toshiya. They both wear glasses, which Katsuki inherited. Katsuki, and therefore Lust, also got his father’s coloring with his mother’s smile. He had an older sister, Mari, who didn’t look like her brother until she stood next to him. Then it was undeniable.

“Water for you, Minako-sempai,” Hiroko offers instead. The argument is from Katsuki Yuuri’s childhood, before this woman left without warning one day.

Right.

Okukawa Minako, the Dancing Alchemist. Something sudden made her vanish until Pride forced her back, since he needed scores of Alchemists for the Lior plan to work. Lust can’t get up and flee, it’ll attract attention now. He’s stuck. He has to order at least one drink.

“Welcome,” Hiroko calls. She’s warm, inviting, and Lust is besieged by memories of skinned knees, cooking lessons, soft hugs. “What can I get for you? We have a snow crab hot pot feature tonight —“

“The katsudon, please,” Lust says between fake coughs. “And a beer.”

“Of course, dear,” she says, and she flits off to put in the order. Toshiya brings his beer, Lust noting his grin out of the corner of his eye as he nods in thanks. The food is ready in a startling amount of time with how crowded it is, but that’s why the Katsukis never struggled when other inns would fail.

The egg is perfectly cooked, though Lust isn’t fond of them. The sauce is good, the pork cutlet is tender and flavorful, the rice is the right amount of sticky. The beer is cold and sweet, and though Lust can’t get drunk, it’s a welcome change from water or the tea Minami splits with him.

He pays with a generous tip and doesn’t say goodbye beyond a long, pained stare to memorize the sign.

He won’t be coming back.

*

_Lust spends too much time thinking and researching._

_The blind Alchemist is easy to find dirt on, since he’s military. Victor Nikiforov, the Ice Storm Alchemist. He studied under Yakov Feltsman for just short of a decade, passed the State Alchemist certification on his first try by ending an accident caused by a different candidate. Married shortly after, widowed a few years beyond that._

_Six months after his husband’s funeral he showed up to base with empty eye sockets covered by a sash._

_The late husband’s name was Katsuki Yuuri, and he wore Lust’s face when he existed._

_For the first time, there’s a gaping chasm in Lust’s stomach. The photograph was taken at sunset on their wedding day: matching white suits, Nikiforov’s long hair tied back with flowers, and his own face with messy black fringe, blue eyeglasses, and a smile that could light up the city as they danced with their rings glimmering in the last throws of light before the gloaming set in._

_Lust tilts his head and examines the photo. That type of smile would crack his face, shatter his jaw and teeth from its sincerity. It’s repugnant._

_Katsuki had a family: mother, father, sister. He and Nikiforov lived in a brick cottage with a poodle they called Makkachin._

_The banality infuriates him. This pig is who Nikiforov blubbered over?_

_He rifles through more photos of Nikiforov, in both happy days and sad. His smile is truly infectious, and since the photos are black and white or sepia-toned, Lust isn’t confident about his eye color. They were light, he thinks when he sees them open in a photo next to his (Katsuki’s) deep brown ones._

_Water. The canals in Aquroya, like a mix of aquamarine and the true blue of a cloudless sky. They were blue once, but…they’re gone._

_They ride the same train to Lior as all the ordered soldiers, sharing Fuhrer Pride’s private car with Sloth. Lust knows Nikiforov is through a door and a short walk. He could see him. He wants nothing less than to see him, but his eyes stray to the door every few beats of the tracks, and eventually Greed gives him a disgusted look._

_“What?” Lust asks. None of the rest pay them any mind._

_“You think I haven’t noticed you pouring over all that garbage about the blind Colonel?” Greed has the demeanor of a shark detecting blood in the water._

_Lust doesn’t dignify it with a response. He looks out the window instead, though it’s difficult._

_"You know he’s collateral damage like all the rest.” Greed buffs his too long nails. “First to show up is the first to leave. It’s only good manners.”_

_“Don’t you ever wonder?” Lust asks, though he doesn’t specify further. It’d insult both of their intelligence if he did._

_Greed neither fidgets nor speaks for long enough Lust actually looks at him. Greed’s expression is twisted in a vain attempt at his usual manic grin. “I hear a song sometimes,” he admits after another moment of silence. “Paper fan, royal outfit, your majesty…once, you left your country and travel around the world —“_

_Greed’s eyes are unfocused, and his voice wavers like he’s a child in mourning. Lust watches in detached fascination._

_“His father took him to that —“ Greed falters. “He was the one who caused this.”_

_This_ _being, of course, the shadow half-existence they lead._

_“You know how they have to give up something?” Greed says. His voice is back to its normal cold, too bright register._

_Lust thinks of thick silver lashes framing a smiling pair of light eyes._

_“Chulanont’s Dad lost his vocal chords,” Greed answers with a smirk. “Pride and I didn’t leave that town for a while. He saw me, but he couldn’t talk. Just gave a silent, horrified scream like those moving pictures they want to put in theaters by next year.”_

_A blindfold, a report of eye sockets with nothing filling them six months after burying a spouse…_

_“Nothing good comes of it, Lust,” Greed says. He turns solemn and stone still. “Don’t think about it anymore. They made us these things, and they’ll help unmake us when the Philospher’s Stone forms. We’ll be what we should be then, remade fresh on the husks of their essence, above them like we rightfully belong.” Greed kisses his teeth. “These Alchemists think they’re gods, not letting us rest, then have the nerve to call us the monsters.”_

_“No, Yuuri, I’ll love you for the rest of mine,” reverberates in Lust’s ears._

_Greed puts his feet up on the empty seat to Lust’s right. He gives him an up and down glance. “When we get what’s ours, you and I should stay together, don’t you think? We’ve always been all we’ve got. No sense in wrecking what works.”_

_Lust glances at fast-moving scenery. When he looks back at Greed, his eyes are soft, like there’s something hidden in his words._

_He thinks of soft whispers the night before a State Alchemy certification exam. He thinks of lips pressed to lips, silver hair sliding through fingers like the softest pink sand._

_Lust looks at Greed. “We’ll see,” is his only offer._

_*_

Having his ear onto the ground is fine when things are good, but when things are bad, they are very bad.

Fuhrer Nikiforov’s decisions are quite unpopular. 

Scaling back operations. Diplomacy before bombs and human weapons using Alchemy. More money for veterans, more money into the community. Less money for weapons-grade automail. Less money for vehicles. A long, quiet peace for the first time in far too long is his goal, and it makes some of the brass disenchanted with their charismatic hero. 

No one who actively desires power should have it, Lust thinks. No one who thirsts for glory should lead a military. Victor’s the right person for this job, but these idiot narcissists think otherwise.

At barely thirty, Victor has decades of his tenure left provided he doesn’t resign or die young. He’s done nothing that would get a court-martial off the ground. The only proof he broke the taboo are that pissy child Alchemist who’s off in the sticks, his dead Lieutenant, and Lust himself.

Lust definitely won’t snitch, and Plisetsky would have to sell himself out in the process.

If they can’t remove him the legal way, then they can kill him or force him out. One of those would be a lot easier than the other. 

Victor always travels with an entourage. It’s part of the job. It’s easy enough for Lust to join the back of their formation without uttering a word, walking in step with all the other steadfast tin soldiers so no one hears an extra pair of boots.

It’s time to renew or retire the State Alchemists, which has Victor holed up after hours more than usual. Minami has been nervously unable to shut up about getting re-certified, but in tandem with his anxiety comes bravado and good cheer.

Minami is too good for this sorry world of filth, and Lust makes a vow that if a hair on his head gets out of place that he’ll amputate the hand responsible. 

Instead of waiting until lunch, Lust breaks from routine to see Minami off before his presentation. “You’’ll do great,” he reassures in a way that rings artificial to his own ears. Katsuki would have known what to say, perhaps, but Lust is not Katsuki Yuuri. He never can be.

Minami grins and shakes his hand far too vigorously. Lust always wears the white gloves regardless of season or weather. 

A person Lust doesn’t recognize precedes Minami into the auditorium. He’s gaunt and tall with dark hair, his face is covered in pock marks, and he is constantly looking over his shoulder as he sweats too much for how cool it is indoors.

Lust narrows his eyes.

His shoulder insignia is that of a Major: two thin gold stripes at the top and bottom of the blue wool, a gold button at the outside tips, and a single gold star in the dead center.

However, his name patch says Lance Corporal. 

Minami bounds like a puppy into his hearing. When the door closes, Lust takes a shortcut to the West entrance, slipping inside like a bat on silent wings.

Victor listens, nods, asks incredibly intelligent questions. He’s always been far too good at Alchemy, almost as good at it as he was loving Katsuki Yuuri. When another officer on the board asks Minami about part of his research, Lust hears the click no one else does.

He moves without even thinking like a cheetah stalking prey for her cubs. His claws come out and before the fake Lance Corporal can act, Lust cuts off his head and the arm holding the detonator. His once clean-uniform is now purple and maroon in spots thanks to the blood coating him.

People scream and almost trample out of the room with obvious panic. Lust pulls off a shredded white glove and dabs his face of the assassan’s blood with a clean section. His cover fell onto the floor when he began to run, and he drops what remains of the other glove to the ground.

The MPs will catch wind any second which means Lust has to run, but before he leaves he turns. There are only two people remaining in the entire auditorium.

The first is, defying all logic, Minami. His eyes are almost as large as his entire face. Lust swallows, unused to this particular brand of pain he feels now that he’s sure to lose his only friend.

The second isn’t even remotely shocking. Fuhrer Victor Nikiforov stands behind his raised dais. There’s a glaive carved from ice in his right hand with the iridescent tint of the typical poison. He uses the glaive like an over-sized walking stick to lean on, and a smile forms on his face.

“I was wondering when we’d meet again properly,” Victor says. His voice is warm, even playful considering he almost died a moment ago. “I wouldn’t have chosen these circumstances, but…well. It’s still good to see you, Lust.”

Minami looks at Victor, then back to Lust.

Lust’s claws retract. He doesn’t alter his expression, but his voice gives his relief away anyhow.

“Hello, Victor.” 

*

_He doesn’t know why he’s here. It’s not like the six-foot deep, six-foot long plot with the headstone he stands before holds a body. Lust is the body. The soul is anyone’s guess._

_There’s a mostly dried, faded blue rose that Lust picks up. The fragrance is so cloying he almost chokes, and he disposes of it without a second thought. He sits on his knees and sweeps away the remaining petals with his hands, uncovering the raised text on the marker._

_Katsuki Yuuri._  
_Beloved son, brother, and devoted husband.  
_ _Even if there had been a thousand years, it would have never been enough time._

_Lust holds a piece of paper in his left hand. Instead of pen and ink, he decided to write in Braille. Since the intended recipient can’t see, it will likely amount to nothing he muses as he sets it on the headstone. The wind will carry it, scattering it feet, yards, miles, leagues._

_There are approaching footsteps and Lust ducks behind a large statue of a weeping seraph. Victor walks with confidence, not needing his eyes to find his way. In his hand is a solitary, long-stemmed blue rose, and Lust has a heart like an ancient rock carved by the sea._

_Victor doesn’t pick up the paper._

_Lust watches until he can’t, then he flees as quietly as he can like the ghost of that hangs over them both should have done far too long ago._

_*_  

The uniform is uncomfortable. The wool scratches and doesn’t breathe, and though Lust doesn’t sweat, it’s better to no longer need one.

He drives Victor to the small house after borrowing a car from the motor pool. Before he lost his sight, Victor was a horrendous motorist who thought speed limits and sensible braking were suggestions.

As Lust only has so many lives, he would have insisted on driving regardless.

He parks by the curb in front of the short, white wooden gate. Street cleaning is done on Tuesdays between ten pm and eight am Wednesday. It’s Thursday, so they won’t need to move the car after dinner like they usually do th—

Lust stiffens. He slams the car door a little too hard as he opens the passenger one for Victor. The blindfold may hide Victor’s eye sockets, but it does nothing to obscure his smile. Lust helps him take the step down out of the car and then lets him lead.

Not like he has a key, after all.

“The garden’s kept by the triplets,” Victor admits, sensing Lust’s observations of the perfectly watered and trimmed hydrangeas. “But I learned to cook after…well. After.”

Lust doesn’t respond. Victor opens the door, and they enter together. Victor hangs his uniform jacket on the brass hooks that Katsuki’s thick blue overcoat would have rested beside in better days. The pictures are still on the walls: the wedding, when they were still essentially children the day they found…

Makkachin.

Victor disappears briefly, but then Lust hears the backdoor open and close. An excited scatter of paws and nails bounce on the kitchen floor as Victor says something sweet and soft. He comes back to the foyer with the brown poodle at his side.

Lust looks at the dog, remembering times when Katsuki was a pillow for his sixty pounds of bones and curls. Katsuki would sneak him the pork cutlets at Yu-Topia, he recalls.  He crouches onto his knees. “Makkachin.”

Makkachin’s posture turns defensive and wary. His lips pull the slightest bit back from his teeth as he slinks to a yard from Lust and no further. Lust frowns but raises an outstretched, upturned palm.

Makkachin sniffs twice. He fully bares his fangs and fills the foyer with a growl.

“Makkachin!” Victor scolds. 

Lust stands and takes three steps away from the dog. His hands fold behind his back in a prim stance. He uses every ounce of his strength to hide how strongly this rejection wounds him. 

Makkachin growls louder, then goes quiet upon a second admonishment from Victor. He sits by Victor’s ankle with his brown eyes fixed on Lust.

The message could not be clearer unless Makkachin suddenly gained the power of speech.

“I don’t know what’s gotten into him,” Victor says. He sounds sad, regretful. “He loves people.” His word choice hits them both at once, and Lust almost faints from the strain of keeping his expression neutral. “I don’t mean —“

“No sense in lying to ourselves,” Lust interjects. Victor flinches as the words are laced with battery acid.

Victor ages ten years in a moment. “Right.” He’s smiling again after a moment thanks to a quick recovery. “You smell like blood. Do you want to take a bath?”

Lust always smells like blood. Ashes, blood, and adrenaline are the chief components of the gourmand that lingers on a Homunculus’s skin. What matters is that he’s caked in blood, his hair stiff from where it’s dried and with bits of red in his periphery thanks to spatters in his eyelashes and across his cheekbones. “Yes.”

“Would you like a tour?” Victor asks after an awkward moment. “The master is upstai —“

“The guest room on this floor will suffice,” Lust interrupts. “I’ll use it tonight, and be on my way at dawn.” 

Lust walks down the foyer, brushing past Victor, and turns left to the guest room with its own en suite bathroom. Giacometti primarily made himself home there when he’d have too much to drink during a visit. 

Victor audibly swallows. “You don’t have to.”

His words are kind and full of longing; longing for a man Lust looks like but beyond the surface shares no commonalities. 

Lust doesn’t look back. “Actually, I do.”

Like the car, he slams the door too hard behind him. 

*

_Yuuri carries the rings in his pocket for six weeks before he screws his courage to the sticking place._

_The eve of Victor’s exam, he lies on his twin bed with Makkachin, who somehow must sense he needs comforting. His hands sweat so badly he may as well have just soaked them in water.  There’s a lull in Victor’s studying, and then his eyes are on him like always. There’s so much love there, so much faith in him, and he manages to begin. “Victor---”_

_Yuuri’s voice gives out._

_Victor smiles. “Go on,” he encourages, too good for Yuuri._  

 _All Yuuri wants is to be worthy of his love, and in a bid to prove himself, he pulls the black velvet box out of his pocket. After opening it, Yuuri shows Victor the contents: two matching gold bands in their respective sizes._  

 _Victor stares like he’s been given the entire world on a platter._  

_“I thought...for good luck, I would give this to you and have one for myself. And---” Yuuri pushes his glasses up to the bridge of his nose. “If you win...if you pass...then...would you marry me?”_

_Victor stands and takes the ring, sliding it onto his right ring finger. He repeats this gesture with Yuuri’s band. “What if I marry you regardless?”_

_Normally, Yuuri hates crying. He’s hideous when he cries, with blotchy cheeks and bloodshot eyes for days. This time, he can’t help but think he’s beautiful as he weeps with joy. “It’s called incentive. Pass the test, become the new State Alchemist, and we’ll marry next month when you get your assignment.”_

_Victor presses their palms together with the brightest smile he’s ever had, and Yuuri’s spirits soar somehow even higher. Victor loves him as much as he loves Victor, and since there’s no way Victor won’t be the winner tomorrow, they’ll be married by summer._

_The way his heart bursts takes over his rationality, and once a long-suffering Makkachin vacates the bed, Yuuri removes his glasses, brushes the silver strands out of Victor’s face, and shows instead of tells him how tightly he holds his heart._

_He sneaks to the Yu-Topia Inn at dawn after giving Victor a good luck kiss or twelve, but his cover’s immediately blown when his mother takes one look at his face and the fading marks decorating his neck from Victor’s eager lips._

_Yuuri struggles to form an explanation until she laughs. “I had a feeling Vicchan would be a full-fledged Katsuki within the year,” she says, ebullient and full of light._

_His cheeks flame red, but when Victor shows up in his new uniform that night for dinner, Yuuri refuses to let go of his hand under the table, and his father toasts them one too many times with the good sake._

_*_

Lust hasn’t had the luxury of a hot bath in longer than he cares to admit. He sits in the tub, unbothered by water that is just shy of boiling, and he watches the white porcelain and clear water stain pink and red.

Murder is a messy business.

He thinks of water that smells of minerals and salt, steam rising in cold weather as Katsuki would sit with his towel folded at the crown of his hair.

Memories are wastes of synapses. What good is having all of these moments filling his brain when he can only look at them with detachment? Katsuki’s life is a taxidermied _Acherontia lachesis_ pinned with care into a shadowbox to be observed by a lepidopterist as they complete their dissertation.

The bathroom has wallpaper patterned with birds and florals using the same blue and white as a Delftware vase. Katsuki picked it, covering the attached bedroom in it as well. The Wainscotting is a gleaming white, as are the linens and the doors.

Katsuki loved blue. The sky, the sea, dependability, cleanliness, _serenity_.

Lust is tempted to tear down the decor without even patching the walls. He prefers red, like the stones he consumed that made him what he is. Red like his name, like the blood caked on his hands and body he used a sponge to scrub off.

The water temperature drops to tepid and then outright cold. Lust doesn’t care, but he drains the tub anyhow. He towels off, wipes the steam from the oak-framed mirror above the sink. Red eyes and feral teeth, but other than that he wears a dead man’s face. That same dead man’s height with his weight, shoe size, hair texture...nothing but the eyes and teeth are his own.

He left his clothing on the floor by the doorway, and when he exits to grab it, he’s greeted by a well-loved oatmeal cardigan and a pair of chocolate-brown striped flannel pants on the bed. There’s a pair of soft slippers on the floor, and Lust rolls his eyes as he dresses in his typical black and mesh suit.

A soft knock sounds on the door. He listens before opening to make sure the dog isn’t anywhere close. It must be obvious, because then Victor says, “Makkachin is upstairs on the bed. I shut him in when I came back down.”

Lust opens the door only about a third. Victor is in the black t-shirt worn under military uniforms and a pair of faded black pants. His slippers match the ones by Lust’s bed.

The temptation to remove his entrails while he’s conscious is greater than ever before.

“I laid out some pajamas,” Victor says. “And I put on a stew for dinner. It’s nothing fancy, but I didn’t learn much cooking before —“ He waves at the strip of silk across his face.

“I’m not hungry,” Lust says, utterly contrary.

“Okay.” Victor takes a breath. “May I come in?”

“It’s your house,” Lust answers. He opens the door, and Victor puts a hand out. When it makes contact with the sharp corner of an oak dresser near the door, Lust understands. “You don’t come in here much.”

“No,” Victor says with a rueful laugh. “The kitchen, the backyard, walks down the block, and upstairs to the bed and bath. I missed the same step enough times I almost moved my things down here, though.”

Victor…shuffles, there’s no other word for it, and when he’s sure he’s safe, sits on the bed. His hand drops onto the clothing he set out. His face flushes, a lovely, delicate pink across the bridge of his nose. He clears his throat. “I can come back if you aren’t decent.”

“I’m not naked,” Lust says with a sigh. “I’m in my normal clothing.”

“ _Normal_ is relative in your case, considering what I’ve been told about that outfit,” Victor quips. It’s stunningly, offensively normal. Like this is a thing they do, banter and get hot under the collar when the other one’s undressed.

Lust rubs his temple. It’s impossible for him to get headaches, _and yet_. “Did you want something?”

Victor stands, but his foot tangles in the rug, and Lust doesn’t even know he’s moved until he holds him in his arms. Victor’s taller even in slippers and his hands land on Lust’s shoulders to keep steady.

“I can always tell when you’re close,” Victor murmurs in his ear. His voice is Dupioni silk and a summer picnic right before the rain hits. He smells like winter and a bit of oud. His forelock brushes against Lust’s earlobe.

The urge to eviscerate him rises.

“Your body temperature,” Victor elaborates. “Almost twenty years of ice alchemy. I can feel when someone in the same room is feverish…or their body is too cold.”

Right.

Lust lets him go. “I’ll be gone by sunrise. You won’t hear from me again.”

Victor cannot see him, and yet his gaze pierces through him  like he’s nothing. “You can stay as long as you wish. I think I’d like the company.”

“You won’t even hear me leave,” Lust says.

Victor’s head tilts slightly to the left. He nods. “If you insist, although…”

“Although?” Lust feels weird and disjointed, like a piece of china that’s poorly repaired with gold, the reformed cracks haphazardly mended so every single one shows.

“Where would you go?” Victor asks. “The rest of your group are gone. So I guess…I don’t understand what could be out there for you. Especially when you’ve been on base for months.”

Lust’s eyes widen.

Victor snorts. “Did you think I didn’t know? Of course I heard about the mysterious unnamed soldier eating lunch with my newest State Alchemist every day like clockwork. Of course I noticed my entourage had one too many people in elevators since the weight was suddenly distributed oddly. I can feel you in a room with me, like you absorb heat instead of giving it off.” Victor strokes Lust’s hair with a thoughtful expression. “I’ve never been just a pretty face.”

Lust pushes away his hand. “I’m not him,” he gets out somewhere between a snap and a plea.

“Yes, I’m well aware.” Victor’s face, posture, and voice are tightly controlled, emotions forbidden thanks to standing at parade rest.

All of the things he’s done, and this is the moment where Lust not only feels judged, he can sense how badly he comes up short. His hands clench so he doesn’t stab Victor through the skull. “Get out.” 

Victor makes a noise, but he does as he’s told. He slams the door behind him without any further acknowledgment.

Not a man, not wholly a monster, his face belonging to another…Lust knows how much of a disappointment he must be.

His hands shake as he sinks to the floor, sitting haphazardly where Victor tripped, and he wishes that it was less obvious that his host for the night agrees. 

*

_Around Victor’s birthday, Yuuri catches a cold. “It’s nothing,” he tells Victor the Aggressively Awful Nurse. “I just need rest.”_

_Once the congestion passes, he still can’t climb his own staircase without stopping for breath. He won’t admit it, doesn’t let Victor help. Makkachin hovers sometimes, but he has special privileges. The dog can if he wants._

_Yuuri can’t take sunset walks with Victor without needing to rest. The steam of the hot springs causes him to wheeze. Maybe he’s developed asthma, he excuses to Victor._

_Then he wakes one morning, and after almost fainting in the shower, he knows. Yuuri stops the pretense. This time when Victor suggests a doctor, they go._

_The diagnosis is what the poisonous whispers in the back of his mind suggested. Science and progress can help with lost limbs given enough money and lengthy physiotherapy._

_A bad stroke of genetic luck, non-small cell lung cancer in a low-risk patient, though —_

_Victor asks a barrage of questions, and Yuuri can’t hear his individual words over the sound rushing through his ears, like he’s submerged as a seaside church bell rings. He stares at Victor, commits the determination in his eyes and the sharp angle of his nose to memory._

_He always suspected they weren’t made to last._

*

Sleep doesn’t come for Lust that night. He sits on the bed in the dim light from the oil lamps on the side tables. There’s a large bookshelf next to the dresser, and he grabs a random leather-bound tome from the middle row.

 _And in the silence of the night_  
_Though for the briefest while,_  
_Your haunting face shall shine upon me  
_ _And smile its dazzling smile._

A red pen on his lover’s…no, new husband’s back, is what Katsuki used the morning after the wedding. The Honeymoon was delayed, and he woke before Victor, drawing roses over the dips in his spine around the title of this piece in calligraphy taught by his mother as a boy.

For hours, Lust opens and closes the book, paces the room, and repeat. He can’t sit still and should have probably eaten just to have something to do with his hands. Burning books is abhorrent to him, but he’s so tempted at this moment. 

“I thought you were leaving.”

He’s so lost he didn’t hear the door partially open. “I’ll be gone any minute.”

“You say that like I’m evicting you,” Victor replies.

His face is gentle, his stance is casual, and Lust hates him so violently he throws the book towards the bridge of his nose. Years of fighting as an Alchemist plus years of adapting to his disability means Victor dodges it with an amount of ease that simply ignites Lust’s rage further. He crosses the room and beats Victor’s chest with his open palms, smacking him repeatedly.

Victor restrains his hands with frightening ease.

Lust can easily kill him anyways.   

“You’re crying,” Victor says. 

Lust didn’t even notice, but hot, salty tears roll down his face in rivulets. “Shut up.”

Victor drops one of his hands, using the other to wipe them away. The tenderness is shocking, as is the nonchalance. “I found your note.”

After a vain few attempts to push him away, Lust gives up.

_I still do. Thank you, Victor._

“I’m not him,” Lust says. The words are small, barely escaping his closed-up throat.

“I’m aware,” Victor answers.

“Are you?” Lust spits. “I said I was leaving. I’m a man of my word.” 

“Where will you go? Who will you have if you leave?” Victor asks.

“We all only have ourselves in the end,” Lust answers.

“But we don’t need to be alone along the way,” Victor says. “I thought I was alone, and I wasn’t, Lust. You don’t have to feel the same. Regardless of anything else, you don’t have to keep running. You don’t have to isolate yourself.”

All of the bitterness, the death, the blood and betrayal, all of these things that Lust’s done. He’s being offered forgiveness, a second chance that’s wholly unearned, and it would be so easy to say yes. Yes to a real place to rest, yes to ending the killing, yes to _Victor_ —

Who isn’t immortal, who will age while Lust remains the same, and who will die one day of natural causes.

Then where will Lust be?

Victor must sense he needs the space, so he drops his hand and steps back.

Lust wraps his arms around his torso like a straight-jacket. He won’t meet Victor’s eyes.

“Just…at least until you have a plan,” Victor offers. “Stay until you’ve figured out your goals, and when you’ve chosen, you’ll be free to leave and I…won’t ask you to stay.”

It’s practical. It’s also a strange type of double-jeopardy for them both

Lust drops his hands to his sides. “Fine. No questions. No talking me out of it.”

Victor nods. “Like you, I’m a man of my word.”

*

_He watches them die from afar. Four of his brethren gone, burned to liquid like metal in a smelting plant. Pride stands next to him with Greed on his other side, and he places his hands on both of their shoulders. He’s a mountain of a man compared to the two of them; perhaps he feels the gesture is comforting. “That damn Colonel,” he growls. Then he shrugs, the affable pleasure back in his voice. “Oh well. You know what they say about omelets and eggs?”_

_Lust glances at him out of the corner of an eye._

_“That you can’t make one without breaking some of the other.” Pride cracks his neck on both sides.  He drops his hands and turns. “Take out the Alchemist, boys. His subordinates, his newfound allies, his dog at home if you have to. Just end him.”_

_He walks away, not looking over his shoulder, and the ponytail he wears moves just enough Lust can see the ouroboros on the back of his neck._

_Lust’s brow flattens into a confused and irritated expression. Greed’s own eyebrow is raised. “Wait…” Lust begins. “Don’t we need them for the stone?”_

_Pride stops. He turns with a hand closing around his rapier. “Are you questioning my instructions?”_

_“Part of the plan requires spilling the blood of as many powerful Alchemists as possible,” Lust reminds him. “If you have us kill them now, then we’re down four: Okukawa, Leroy, Plisetsky, and Vic…Nikiforov. Won’t that cause the stone’s manufacture to fail?”_

_Pride’s face is stone cold. “I didn’t stutter. Waste Nikiforov and his merry band. Salt the earth after.”_

_Greed smiles. “All this pent-up energy I have…it’ll be nice to do something with it.”_

_The answers aren’t good enough. “You promised us the Philosopher’s Stone. You promised us we’d be human again when you have the means.”_

_“Settle down, Lust,” Greed says. “It’s only four. We still have tons of others here in Lior: Notte Stellata, January Star, Liebesträume, Turandot, Recondita Armonia — “_

_“That’s not the point!” Lust snaps. He doesn’t look at Greed. His ire is solely focused on Pride. “Why are you risking the plan for some petty grudge?”_

_Pride shakes his head with a frustrated curse under his breath._

_Lust’s mouth falls open. “You never planned on following through.”_  

_Pride doesn’t answer. He turns as sharply as the soldier he is, striding away at a brisk pace. “We won’t discuss this further. Do what I said, Lust.”_

_Greed sighs. “Come on, Lust. We need to bait the widdle bunnies.”_

_Lust gives Greed a look before he stares at the path Pride’s now disappeared down. He has questions, but above all, he has anger. He knows what he is, and until he saw Victor he was fine with it. Lust isn’t a being so much as a tool masquerading as a human, and the promise of being able to live, to grow old and leave this world, has been his driving force for the last two years._

_It’s all been lies, and now Lust is left standing while he holds an empty bag._  

_Although...Pride is a paranoid son of a bitch who insists on bringing a safe with him wherever he goes, even as far as this endless sand hellhole. It’s got exactly one item in it: his human skull._

_Lust is going to pay Victor a visit. If it goes how he assumes it will, then he’ll practice his safe-cracking._  

 _*_  

Lust inhabits the house like some kind of ghost bound to its bottom floor. He makes sure to avoid Makkachin at all times, though they catch occasional glimpses of one another, Makkachin immediately growing defensive when he catches him in his sights.

He shares dinners with Victor, grudging, silent meals where he pushes food around his plate, while Victor talks about his days. He does help with chores, though, the muscle memory from Katsuki’s life here guiding him through things like the best time of day to put the wash on the line or how to angle a stool to catch the cobwebs in the corners above the top of the stairwell.

He covers his face like he did on the train and does the shopping in the open-market, vaguely realizing it’s the time of year that fish is cheap but beef is pricey. He knows besides the Yu-Topia katsudon, Victor was fond of a roast Katsuki would make as well as a soup of bone broth and beets, so he splurges on the ingredients after three rounds of haggling with the butcher.

Once a month, Victor returns home late smelling like Yu-Topia. He doesn’t give an explanation, but Lust doesn’t ask for one in the first place.

The seasons shift from warm to cool and then to outright cold. Makkachin grows no friendlier, but he does grow less aggressive. Lust learns to mostly ignore him, in spite of how occasionally he longs to scratch his ears.

When he has the time, he researches. He could buy passage on a seafaring vessel to return to the Katsukis ancestral homeland. Hiroko and Toshiya’s grandparents are the ones who immigrated to Amestris, so probably no one there would know his face. 

Katsuki never got to show the seaside village in his lineage to Victor, though, and so the idea of going without him settles…funny in Lust’s chest.

His original idea of Xing isn’t terrible. He’d need to learn more of their language before he goes, but he’s definitely performed harder tasks.

He can go to the North, live at the border with Drachma. He’d only be seen if he chose to be. It’s easy to hide there, so easy a child could manage it. He could even go to Drachma itself if he so chose.

Table City in Creta is to the west, but less viable thanks to all of its border disputes with Amestris. The greater hostility between Amestris and Aerugo rules it out, as well.

The blue and white wallpaper is covered in copied maps, Lust’s notes regarding terrain, climate, and average net worth of an individual citizen. He ponders these factors in his room every evening after washing and drying the dishes.

He reads, also.

More poetry, language textbooks, how to build things, how to survive the elements. Lust only had to learn how to murder, hollow seduction, how to pretend to care. He needed to learn stealth and what veins to cut to gather information that won’t cause the person to die before he has all he needs.

Every other week, he’s woken to the laughter of three children. His windows face the side of the house, so he doesn’t have to hide under the bed or anything so melodramatic. His resemblance to Katsuki makes being spotted by the girls unduly complicated. Human transmutation is not only taboo, it’s an actual crime. He won’t send Victor to prison in disgrace on his account.

The front door bangs open, Makkachin barking happily. Lust hears Victor speaking to a second person through the walls. He slips to the corner by the foyer just out of sight and…Victor brought home Minami.

He forgets himself and stumbles into view.

“Hi, Lust,” Victor says. “I should have called, but we have a guest for dinner.”

“I’m so happy to see you!” Minami cries. He’s practically vibrating with cheer and excitement.

Lust has no idea what to say. The dog is wary in between them, but Minami is so happy and Victor’s smile undoes something within him. “You…don’t think I’m scary?” is what he finally manages.

Minami shrugs. His smile doesn’t fade. “You’re my friend, and you saved the Fuhrer. Plus, I like you a lot as a person. Why should I be scared?”

There’s no qualifier on _person_. Lust feels tears prick the corners of his eyes.

Victor must sense it. “Minami, as our guest, I insist you relax in the parlor with Makkachin. Lust and I will make dinner, and you’re welcome to stay the night if we run too late.”

“Thank you, sir,” Minami says. Lust wonders what it’s like to be so unfailingly cheerful. The boy is an actual ray of light. “But I can call my brother. He lives two blocks from here, and we’re roommates anyhow.”

“Sounds fine,” Victor says. “We better get to it, but if you’d like something to drink come help yourself.”

“I’m fine!” Minami is poking and pulling Makkachin’s cheeks. Makkachin loves every minute of it.

Lust opens his mouth, but then he turns and enters the kitchen. The fishmonger had a nice filet of fresh caught salmon, and he uses a talon to trim it to individual portions after check it for bones. He has the stupid ability, may as well use it for the mundane since he likely won’t ever murder anyone again.

Which…he won’t miss. Too messy, the screams are often too loud. 

Victor braises long green beans in garlic, pepper flakes, and bacon. He roasts some potatoes until the outsides are crisp, and Lust waits to cook the fish so it’ll all be the same warmth when served.

This is when he asks. “Why did you do this?”

Victor hums, pausing to feel the knobs on the gas range to make sure he isn’t turning on the broiler by mistake. “You’re lonely, and while you aren’t exactly enthusiastic about talking to me, you never seemed to mind him on base. I thought maybe, as long as you are here, he can have dinner with us once a week so you can have someone to talk to.”

“Why?” Lust repeats.

After closing the oven, Victor hovers a hand over the counter to check its temperature before sets the potholders down. There’s been about four burned beyond saving pairs Lust has seen just since he moved in, thanks to Victor’s sometimes absent-mindedness.

“No one should have no one,” Victor answers. “You have people willing to be your someones if you can let yourself accept it.”

“I don’t know how many times I have to —“ The icebox door slamming cuts Lust off.

 “ _You’re not him_ , yes, it’s a very boring refrain at this point,” Victor retorts.  “You can’t possibly be so thick to not realize I’m acutely aware of this fact? Yuuri definitely never could have stopped an assassination attempt. A monstrous, incurable illness is the only reason why Yuuri’s gone. All he ever wanted was the two of us by each other’s sides.”

Lust has never actually felt shame before this moment. It’s acute and painful, something he would rather not experience again.

“I may be the one who lost his eyes, but there are _two_ blind people in this house,” Victor finishes. “To ensure the clarity of my point: Minami is neither of them.”

What can he say to that? What is even Victor’s point?

He doesn’t get to ask, as the timer informs them dinner is finished. Lust sits in between Victor and Minami, though he mostly speaks to Minami.

His eyes are only for Victor, though.

*

_“I hate you.” Lust tries valiantly to spit the words. His traitorous tone comes out like spun cotton batting, shattering the pretense. “Ever since I saw your face, I can’t get you out of my head. I had a purpose, and now it means nothing. I’ll see or hear certain things, and I get lost in a memory that doesn’t even feel like mine. It’s maddening, and it’s all your fault.”_

_“I love you,” Nikiforov blurts with little dignity or self-respect. Only love and honesty round out his words. “I told you I would the rest of my life.”_

*

Minami’s brother, who seems oddly sedate by comparison, takes him home after he does the dishes. (They argued, Minami won the fight, and while he is quite small for his age, he is all the more ferocious for it.)

Victor does not wish Lust good evening as usual, and he reaches for the railing to retire. Before he can advance further, Lust awkwardly says, “Let me.” He takes his left arm by the elbow, guiding him to the second story and then into the master bedroom. Victor left on most of his uniform, removing only the bulky, long jacket so he could cook with short sleeves.

The bedroom is unchanged from Katsuki’s life. The walls are painted a shade of a blue that matches robin’s eggs.  The drapes are heavy cream and silver damask, with cream and blue sheets. The furniture is pristine cherry wood with a lacquered finish.

The only difference is that the vanity mirror is covered with a layer of dust on the fabric..

Somehow Victor keeps his appearance pristine for a man who can’t see, but without eyes mirrors are pointless for anyone no matter how proud he may be of his looks.

Victor hasn’t spoken. Lust is afraid to break the silence, but he does. “Did you cut your hair because of —“

“Yes,” Victor says. “I couldn’t stand the sight of it the day after the burial.”

Lust nods. “I see.” He reaches up, runs his fingers over his scalp, brushes the forelocks out of his face. Then his hands drift to the back of his head. They linger on the knot of his blindfold. “May I?”

“Mm,” Victor asents.

Lust undoes the silk, and it silently drops to the floor. They feel like they’re walking on some kind of wire without a net, he thinks, and Victor screws his eyes as tightly closed as he can. Lust traces his brow line and eyelashes with his thumbs. He stands on his toes and presses his lips to the furrow between Victor’s eyebrows.

Everything breaks, floods him, the onslaught of love tears him apart. When Victor changes the angle of his head so they can kiss properly...he’s reassembled, stronger in the broken places than before.

He transforms into something real as Victor drinks him in, no longer a chaotic well of blood shaped and colored like a lost boy.

Victor is a thirsting man, and Lust consumes him equally as vigorous in turn.

*

_Yuuri recently graduated from school, and he helps with the family inn as a spare pair of hands. It’s honest, fun work, and he loves his family so much. His mother’s sent him on a quick errand this evening before the big dinner rush, and the path he chooses takes him through a park._

_A glimmer of light and a bright tinkling sound like icicles in the wind catch his attention. The large, polished stone fountains at the heart of Elric Park have been frozen into an elaborate display like the Annual Isvhal Remembrance Day fireworks.  “Wow,” Yuuri says._

_A boy about his age turns with his eyebrow raised. He then stops and stares._

_Yuuri cannot help but stare back. His hair is waist-length and shimmers between silver and platinum in the light, and the boy is absently tying it into a high ponytail, but Yuuri loses the power of all of his faculties as he meets his eyes. They’re the sea, the sky, the wind, and the winter all in one. Yuuri can feel his face warm under the scrutiny. “Oh. Um. It’s...pretty,” he stammers._

_He doesn’t really mean the fountain, here._

_“I’m---” The boy hesitates for some reason, then smiles and rallies. “It’s for the State Alchemist exam. I’m practicing to win my spot.” He closes the distance between them with a smile and a flick of a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. “Victor Nikiforov.”_

_Yuuri draws himself to his full height. “Katsuki Yuuri.”_

_He assumes when he extends his hand that Victor will shake it, but he instead turns Yuuri’s hand to kiss the pulse point inside his wrist. Yuuri thinks he may die from the blood rushing to his head._

_“I’m—” Yuuri begins. His awkwardness has always been his fatal flaw. Tonight is no different. “My family lives near this park. We run an inn, Yu-Topia. You can...I mean---only if you want---or like the idea---or---well---”_

_“I’d love to,” Victor says without letting him finish. His own cheeks darken, and he bites his bottom lip for a second._

_Yuuri’s fills with joy, and a little confusion that someone so spectacular would like someone so plain. “Okay, Victor.”_

_“Okay, Yuuri,” Victor answers with a smile._  

_This is when Yuuri falls in love._

*

Lust lies on his back with his hands gripping the sheets.

And the mattress.

And the feathers filling the mattress.

And…is he holding part of a spring?

Above him, Victor spits out a feather. He looks like a figure in a snow globe that was shaken thanks to the down falling around them that dusts his head and shoulders. “What just happened?”

Lust coughs with an embarrassed flush. “Um…well you…it was…” He wishes he could hide his face. He _does_ hide his face behind his hands once he has the presence of mind to retract the claws. “I...shredded our bed.”

Victor’s silence says more than any words ever could.

Lust peeks from behind his fingers, and oh god he’s _disgusting_ , preening like a peacock. “Don’t break your arms patting yourself on the back.”

Victor bursts into laughter. “I’ve heard of finding religion in the...we’ll call them _throes_ , but this is a lot more flattering, thank you.”

“It’s not too late for me to turn you into a human yakitori,” Lust barks.

Victor laughs even harder, somehow keeping the presence of mind to not open his eyes. 

“Fine.” Lust grumbles and pushes him away. He settles as close as he can thanks to Lust’s mid- _flagrante_ mishap, wrapping him in his arms in spite of Lust’s irritation. “This is ridiculous.”

“It’s great,” Victor says. He kisses the normally-slicked back hair on Lust’s forehead that’s been thoroughly mussed thanks to the urgency of a moment ago. “The mattress was old and  needed replacing anyhow. You can help me test the firmness of the new one.”

 Lust snorts but moves closer anyways. He rests a hand over Victor’s heart, feels his breaths move in and out like he’s run a race until they come slower. Victor returns the gesture.

Lust doesn’t miss the momentary flicker of confusion when there’s not really anything there.

The stone in his chest, though…while maybe not a heart, it is the end for Lust should he choose. “I shouldn’t have…really said _still_ ,” Lust admits after a lengthy pause. “Maybe _again_ or just the words _I do_.”

Victor listens, twining their free hands together. A chain with a visibly repaired clasp hangs from his neck with a gold band in its center. Lust opens the chain, and puts the ring on Victor’s finger, the finger Katsuki did the same with all those years ago. Then he moves away only long enough to fumble in his clothing for its match.

Lust places the band in Victor’s palm with his right hand. Victor takes the hint to return the gesture. It’s purely symbolic, but it carries more weight than any legality ever could.

“When you go, I go,” Lust says. “There’s a way I can follow you. However, I won’t…age like you. I hope that doesn’t make you unhappy.”

“I can’t see to know the difference,” Victor admits. “As long as you stay by my side, I’m not particular about the ways and means.”

Lust gives a watery smile. He kisses the corner of Victor’s lips, and they don’t separate until dawn, consummating this second chance.

When they open the door to make breakfast, Makkachin waits with a wagging tail and a smile.

For both of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry it took...13 months (oh my god?), but here we are at the end for real. I do hope it's satisfactory. Leave a comment, send an [ask on Tumblr](https://sinkingorswimming.tumblr.com/ask), or hit me up on Twitter @sink_or_swim if you enjoyed this.
> 
> The poem referenced is "Love, like a bird, is free," by Alexander Blok.
> 
> I'd apologize for all the Bjork on the playlist, but if the Icelandic singer known for her surrealist music videos fits then who am I to refuse?
> 
> Thank you to Nenya for the second set of eyes, and thank you to seventhstar for commissioning this half, as it gave me the motivation to finally get it off the back-burner. :)

**Author's Note:**

> You can yell at me for this at sinkingorswimming on tumblr or sink_or_swim on Twitter. Or here, that's fine too.
> 
> OH just in case there's some confusion:  
> Wrath: Guang-Hong  
> Envy: Leo  
> Lust: Yuuri  
> Greed: Phichit  
> Sloth: Seung Gil  
> Gluttony: Yuri's Grandpa  
> Pride: Ciao Ciao
> 
> ART! ART I HAVE BEEN #blessed with so many beautiful pieces of art for this fic! God I can't even. (It's pretty much all Lust!Yuuri, because what else would it be?)
> 
>  
> 
> [Lust by cmandrrockhard.](https://twitter.com/cmdrrockhard/status/862332350717345792)  
> [Lust by exile_wrath.](https://twitter.com/exile_wrath/status/862554971161501696)  
> [Lust by rayjinar.](https://twitter.com/reginarfic/status/887375155516678144)  
> [Lust by zeepang.](https://twitter.com/Zeepang/status/862125726027448320)  
> [And this incredible series of watercolors by Paulina.inspi.](http://paulinainspi.tumblr.com/post/163345693501/im-really-sorry-for-the-delay-on-publishing-this)
> 
> I also commissioned [this incredible piece from Kyyhky of Lust and Victor's first encounter.](https://twitter.com/Kyyhky7/status/986740477885067264)


End file.
